Old hard drives as backup

[Dreams65]

As I was going through a cabinet where I keep all my spare PC parts, I rediscovered some old hard drives. Over the years I've collected a number of SATA hard drives, some with capacities as small as 180 GB and some as large as 2 TB. What to do with them. I still get requests from friends, or friends of friends who want older PCs for older games, so I keep the 180 and 200 GB drives for that purpose only. But I think it's kind of a waste for the 2 TB hard drives to just be laying around, so I purchased an external hard drive docking station and some cases for internal HDs (see the image below). Usually all my backups are done internally, but what happens if the whole system gets fried...I'd be screwed. The docking station connects to USB 3.0 and has interfaces for SATA 2.5", 3.5" and IDE drives. Just push the HD into the slot, the PC recognizes it and I'm good to go. I use Directory Opus for all my file management and among the many tools it has is a backup utility. Besides dusting off perfectly good hard drives and putting them to use, I also get the peace of mind of having an external backup of important files. Win...win.

 

[Lost4words]

Problem being is that older hard drives have a bigger chance of failing. Dont put all your eggs in one basket i say.

 

[Dreams65]

Problem being is that older hard drives have a bigger chance of failing. Dont put all your eggs in one basket i say.

True...but I'm using the external drives to backup the internal drives I use for backing up other drives.

 

[Neostarwcc]

Honestly I'd personally just toss them. I have a lot of computer parts in the back of my trailer too, some parts from the very early 1990's. I'm going through them next warm day we get this spring and just chuck a majority of them out. Anything not from the 2020's is going in the garbage. Reason being, with SATA now being a thing of the past and PCI-E being the king of storage devices now, nobody really wants 200 GB SATA drives anymore so you couldn't really sell them and tbch, they're junk today and probably don't even work and if they do work, I'd be testing those drives to see just how healthy they really are. If they've been sitting in your basement for over 10 years (I'm guessing anyway) I doubt they're not really all that good anymore.

If you want to backup your data depending on how large the data is I'd recommend cloud storage. Many companies offer up to 100 GBs of free cloud space. Or what I personally do since my wife and I like Microsoft office is we sign up for Microsoft Office 360. It's $5 a month I believe? And you get Microsoft Office and 4 TBs of cloud space if you need that much space like we do. My wife gets 4 TBs and I get 4TBs and I can invite other people to get free 4 TBs of space as well. I think I can have up to 4 family members I forget.

If you don't trust cloud storage and you need a lot of space all you really need is a 2-4 TB USB flash drive. They're about $60-$70 and you can backup everything you want with USB 3.0 (Or USB 3.2 gen 2 or C like I use) and they're handy. You can bring them all around with you and they fit in your pocket. Or if that's too expensive you can either buy a smaller flash drive they can be as cheap as $5 depending on how little space you need or you can go with an External HDD many External Hard drives today use USB C and are around $50 for 2 TB's of space.

 

[Wookiee]

Honestly I'd personally just toss them.

After wiping them or destroying them.

 

[Neostarwcc]

After wiping them or destroying them.

Honestly, It's probably not good for the environment but I'm just going to toss all my old stuff into garbage bags and let the dump take care of my old parts. No need to wipe your hard drives if you had nothing personal on them. If you keep your passwords or credit card information or something like that on them, yeah wipe them ahead of time. But if you just keep games on them or your save files for games or it just has your browser history on them... no need to wipe them really.

 

[Wookiee]

Honestly, It's probably not good for the environment but I'm just going to toss all my old stuff into garbage bags and let the dump take care of my old parts. No need to wipe your hard drives if you had nothing personal on them. If you keep your passwords or credit card information or something like that on them, yeah wipe them ahead of time. But if you just keep games on them or your save files for games or it just has your browser history on them... no need to wipe them really.

Sure, but only if you know for certain you had nothing saved on them. Credentials and sensitive data can still be dug out of it if someone finds it and is determined enough.

I'm not saying it's necessarily likely, but running it through a pass of DBAN or shoving a drill through it at least gives you the certainty you're safe (and if you pull it apart - free magnets!)

 

[dqhall]

As I was going through a cabinet where I keep all my spare PC parts, I rediscovered some old hard drives. Over the years I've collected a number of SATA hard drives, some with capacities as small as 180 GB and some as large as 2 TB. What to do with them. I still get requests from friends, or friends of friends who want older PCs for older games, so I keep the 180 and 200 GB drives for that purpose only. But I think it's kind of a waste for the 2 TB hard drives to just be laying around, so I purchased an external hard drive docking station and some cases for internal HDs (see the image below). Usually all my backups are done internally, but what happens if the whole system gets fried...I'd be screwed. The docking station connects to USB 3.0 and has interfaces for SATA 2.5", 3.5" and IDE drives. Just push the HD into the slot, the PC recognizes it and I'm good to go. I use Directory Opus for all my file management and among the many tools it has is a backup utility. Besides dusting off perfectly good hard drives and putting them to use, I also get the peace of mind of having an external backup of important files. Win...win.

View attachment 297115

USB flash drives are good for small Windows OS backups. iCloud is available for IOS storage. My newer tax returns are on a flash drive. Saves paper.

 

[Dreams65]

Honestly I'd personally just toss them. I have a lot of computer parts in the back of my trailer too, some parts from the very early 1990's. I'm going through them next warm day we get this spring and just chuck a majority of them out. Anything not from the 2020's is going in the garbage. Reason being, with SATA now being a thing of the past and PCI-E being the king of storage devices now, nobody really wants 200 GB SATA drives anymore so you couldn't really sell them and tbch, they're junk today and probably don't even work and if they do work, I'd be testing those drives to see just how healthy they really are. If they've been sitting in your basement for over 10 years (I'm guessing anyway) I doubt they're not really all that good anymore.

If you want to backup your data depending on how large the data is I'd recommend cloud storage. Many companies offer up to 100 GBs of free cloud space. Or what I personally do since my wife and I like Microsoft office is we sign up for Microsoft Office 360. It's $5 a month I believe? And you get Microsoft Office and 4 TBs of cloud space if you need that much space like we do. My wife gets 4 TBs and I get 4TBs and I can invite other people to get free 4 TBs of space as well. I think I can have up to 4 family members I forget.

If you don't trust cloud storage and you need a lot of space all you really need is a 2-4 TB USB flash drive. They're about $60-$70 and you can backup everything you want with USB 3.0 (Or USB 3.2 gen 2 or C like I use) and they're handy. You can bring them all around with you and they fit in your pocket. Or if that's too expensive you can either buy a smaller flash drive they can be as cheap as $5 depending on how little space you need or you can go with an External HDD many External Hard drives today use USB C and are around $50 for 2 TB's of space.

I'm planning on tossing the pre 2000s stuff. Before I started working as a Technical Editor, I used to build computers as a profession. I still build computers, but mostly for a very large extended family, so I need a lot of the parts in the cabinet. I disassembled the IDE and older SATA drives for the discs. You wouldn't believe how many people (PC nerds) like to use them as coasters and and other things, like wall ornaments. I only use the Cloud to backup important family documents, photos and videos. The other stuff, which is mostly work related, I like to keep local. This year I will be purchasing a NAS system along with 4x 8 TB NAS drives for my home business. After that I'm planning on ripping my entire music CD collection to file for backup. That will require around 10 to 15 TBs of space. For now, the internal (external via dock) drives I plan on using are only a temporary solution.

 

[Sophrosyne]

The biggest problem with keeping older drives is unless you don't need a lot of storage space on them the speed at which they can operate at (transfer rates) is a lot slower than newer drives and when small drives were "king" files were in the megabyte or single digit gigabytes they were adequate in speed but now we have files/data in the gigabyte range and not just a few but a LOT of them adding up to fractions of Terabytes. Larger drives can be several times faster at I/O than the smaller ones are so even adding up a few small ones to equal a large one you could find yourself taking 4-5 times longer to get any data backup and/or transfer done with them.

 

[Neostarwcc]

I'm planning on tossing the pre 2000s stuff. Before I started working as a Technical Editor, I used to build computers as a profession. I still build computers, but mostly for a very large extended family, so I need a lot of the parts in the cabinet. I disassembled the IDE and older SATA drives for the discs. You wouldn't believe how many people (PC nerds) like to use them as coasters and and other things, like wall ornaments. I only use the Cloud to backup important family documents, photos and videos. The other stuff, which is mostly work related, I like to keep local. This year I will be purchasing a NAS system along with 4x 8 TB NAS drives for my home business. After that I'm planning on ripping my entire music CD collection to file for backup. That will require around 10 to 15 TBs of space. For now, the internal (external via dock) drives I plan on using are only a temporary solution.

I build computers too. Been building them since I was a kid, hence why I have so many old parts laying around doing nothing for nearly 30 years. Yeah anything pre 2000 I would definitely toss unless you wanted the nostalgia factor which is why I kept a lot of my childhood stuff. But, its not like I'm going to have any kids someday to show the old stuff too and if I did or wanted to show my wife something that existed in the early 90s when she was born I could just show them a picture on google images lol.

You mean the old AOL CD's? My grandfather and I use to use those for BB gun practice when he was alive lol. That's all they were good for.

10 to 15 tbs... hmm... yeah it's going to be hard to store all that space. An external hard drive would be quite expensive that big. At least a hundred dollar bill anyway. I thought my wife and I had a lot of stuff trying to fill 4 TB microsoft cloud drives. You could always make multiple e-mails and say that your extra e-mails are family members and get 16 TBs for $5 a month lol. Nah, that's dishonest I'm kidding.

I honestly don't know what 16 TBs of cloud storage would be. Probably quite expensive as well since most people don't need that much space. Do you use PCI-E 3 or 4.0? I might try to find you a hard drive.

*edit* nvm they're at least a couple hundred dollars for 10 TBs. That's way too expensive. I honestly don't know what to tell you. I've never needed that much space before.

 

[Lost4words]

Sledge hammer is awesome on old drives!

 

[Dreams65]

I build computers too. Been building them since I was a kid, hence why I have so many old parts laying around doing nothing for nearly 30 years. Yeah anything pre 2000 I would definitely toss unless you wanted the nostalgia factor which is why I kept a lot of my childhood stuff. But, its not like I'm going to have any kids someday to show the old stuff too and if I did or wanted to show my wife something that existed in the early 90s when she was born I could just show them a picture on google images lol.

You mean the old AOL CD's? My grandfather and I use to use those for BB gun practice when he was alive lol. That's all they were good for.

10 to 15 tbs... hmm... yeah it's going to be hard to store all that space. An external hard drive would be quite expensive that big. At least a hundred dollar bill anyway. I thought my wife and I had a lot of stuff trying to fill 4 TB microsoft cloud drives. You could always make multiple e-mails and say that your extra e-mails are family members and get 16 TBs for $5 a month lol. Nah, that's dishonest I'm kidding.

I honestly don't know what 16 TBs of cloud storage would be. Probably quite expensive as well since most people don't need that much space. Do you use PCI-E 3 or 4.0? I might try to find you a hard drive.

*edit* nvm they're at least a couple hundred dollars for 10 TBs. That's way too expensive. I honestly don't know what to tell you. I've never needed that much space before.

I was talking about the magnetic platters inside the hard drive. They make good coasters.

I've already picked out the NAS server, it will be a Synology DS920+ which supports 64 TB. The server has an eSATA and USB 3.2 interface, which is adequate for what I need. I've chosen the Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 4 pack for the drives. The backup to the NAS has to happen only once. After that, data synchronization between the internal drives on my PC and the server will be regularly performed via an app. The server and drives cost around 1400 Euros (around $1642). That money is a business expense and has already been put aside for this purpose.

 

[Sketcher]

As I was going through a cabinet where I keep all my spare PC parts, I rediscovered some old hard drives. Over the years I've collected a number of SATA hard drives, some with capacities as small as 180 GB and some as large as 2 TB. What to do with them. I still get requests from friends, or friends of friends who want older PCs for older games, so I keep the 180 and 200 GB drives for that purpose only. But I think it's kind of a waste for the 2 TB hard drives to just be laying around, so I purchased an external hard drive docking station and some cases for internal HDs (see the image below). Usually all my backups are done internally, but what happens if the whole system gets fried...I'd be screwed. The docking station connects to USB 3.0 and has interfaces for SATA 2.5", 3.5" and IDE drives. Just push the HD into the slot, the PC recognizes it and I'm good to go. I use Directory Opus for all my file management and among the many tools it has is a backup utility. Besides dusting off perfectly good hard drives and putting them to use, I also get the peace of mind of having an external backup of important files. Win...win.

View attachment 297115

How's the cooling on that docking station?

I've had the sad experience of having an external drive cover kill at least one drive, and I suspect heat was the primary cause of that.

There's also the potential issue of more hours on the drive meaning there's less life on that drive.

But it's good to get some use out of them anyway, so long as you are not compromising personal data by giving them away.

 

[Dreams65]

How's the cooling on that docking station?

Haven't had any issues...yet. Admittedly, it's not the best solution. I debated on whether I should buy a large capacity single external drive for 250 Euros, or buy a docking station for 50 Euros and use the drives I have stored away. I went with the docking station. The solution is only temporary. This year I will be purchasing a NAS system for my backups.

 

[Neostarwcc]

I was talking about the magnetic platters inside the hard drive. They make good coasters.

I've already picked out the NAS server, it will be a Synology DS920+ which supports 64 TB. The server has an eSATA and USB 3.2 interface, which is adequate for what I need. I've chosen the Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 4 pack for the drives. The backup to the NAS has to happen only once. After that, data synchronization between the internal drives on my PC and the server will be regularly performed via an app. The server and drives cost around 1400 Euros (around $1642). That money is a business expense and has already been put aside for this purpose.

Oh wow, I could never invest in a server. I know servers are quite expensive only I thought they were at least $10,000 to setup. Maybe they were when I was in high school and got cheaper as tech continues to evolve. I'm glad they're cheaper than that though and that I could setup one if I wanted to. I spend a lot of money in my builds too, my wifes build (My old one) was quite expensive. I spent around 3 grand on it because I thought it was going to be my computer for years but, my wife desperately needed a computer so I gave it to her. I don't have a lot of money I live off of disability and my wife doesn't work so I made sure what I built myself was considerably cheaper than that.

I never really worked on servers in my life. Had the opportunity to work on them and take a Computer Repair class in high school and ended up not taking the class, despite knowing a lot about computers and probably could have made a great career for myself.

 

[Dreams65]

Oh wow, I could never invest in a server. I know servers are quite expensive only I thought they were at least $10,000 to setup. Maybe they were when I was in high school and got cheaper as tech continues to evolve. I'm glad they're cheaper than that though and that I could setup one if I wanted to.

NAS (Network Attached Storage) provides file-based data storage services to other devices on the network and are configured and controlled often by using a browser. Even though a NAS will have it's own dedicated CPU and RAM, it doesn't require a full operating system. Usually a stripped down version of a Linux or BSD OS will do (example: FreeNAS). A NAS can cost as little as 200 Euros, or could cost thousands of Euros.

I spend a lot of money in my builds too, my wifes build (My old one) was quite expensive. I spent around 3 grand on it because I thought it was going to be my computer for years but, my wife desperately needed a computer so I gave it to her.

I'm still using a fourth gen. i5 CPU and DD3 RAM. But because I also use my PC for gaming and some of the new games I'm interested in require a little more hardware kick, I will be upgrading the motherboard, CPU, CPU cooler and RAM along with the NAS purchase.

As far as my wife is concerned...she loves laptops. She only uses it for documents, syncing her phone and surfing, so about every three years I buy her a new laptop for around 600 Euros.

I never really worked on servers in my life. Had the opportunity to work on them and take a Computer Repair class in high school and ended up not taking the class, despite knowing a lot about computers and probably could have made a great career for myself.

Back in the early 2000s I worked on a project for Lufthansa Airlines. It was a staging project. That means that we installed and configured new workstations, routers and servers for every airport Lufthansa operates in. Part of that project was repairing or upgrading Compaq (now HP) servers. The server software was Novell Netware and the workstations were installed with Windows or a version of OS/2 Warp. I didn't go to school for any of this. In the early 90s I learned that I had a knack for computers and went with it. In the 90s and early 2000s in Germany, most people were afraid to touch the hardware for fear of breaking their expensive investments...so it was easy for me to find work. If you could do the job, you got hired. What I didn't know, I figured out by doing. Today it seems like everybody and their mother's uncle knows how to build a computer. Because the market is flooded with PC nerds, most companies are being picky and want only people with some kind of certification (which takes about 2-3 years in Germany). So instead of going back to school, I switched my profession from computers to writing technical manuals.

 

[Freth]

As I was going through a cabinet where I keep all my spare PC parts, I rediscovered some old hard drives. Over the years I've collected a number of SATA hard drives, some with capacities as small as 180 GB and some as large as 2 TB. What to do with them. I still get requests from friends, or friends of friends who want older PCs for older games, so I keep the 180 and 200 GB drives for that purpose only. But I think it's kind of a waste for the 2 TB hard drives to just be laying around, so I purchased an external hard drive docking station and some cases for internal HDs (see the image below). Usually all my backups are done internally, but what happens if the whole system gets fried...I'd be screwed. The docking station connects to USB 3.0 and has interfaces for SATA 2.5", 3.5" and IDE drives. Just push the HD into the slot, the PC recognizes it and I'm good to go. I use Directory Opus for all my file management and among the many tools it has is a backup utility. Besides dusting off perfectly good hard drives and putting them to use, I also get the peace of mind of having an external backup of important files. Win...win.

View attachment 297115

I have a number of old HD's lying around myself. Most of them are 250-500gb, nothing over a terabyte. They're simply too small for much use these days, so I just leave them sit with old files on them. Instead, I use several external hard drives for redundancy. I have two 8TB's and two 16TB's. At one time I was doing the same thing, using a docking system for data storage, but my data storage outgrew these old HD's. A 1-2tb HD seems tiny now. I had considered a NAS, but I don't want my files connected to a network.

 

[Dreams65]

At one time I was doing the same thing, using a docking system for data storage, but my data storage outgrew these old HD's. A 1-2tb HD seems tiny now.

Considering I only have a few of those 2 TB drives, I will have that same issue in a short time. Another reason why I'm purchasing a NAS is my CD collection, which consists of about three thousand CDs. I want to rip them to the server, for backup and playback purposes.

I had considered a NAS, but I don't want my files connected to a network.

Makes sense if you have sensitive data. Just plug in an external drive, load the data and disconnect. Better safe than sorry.

 

[Neostarwcc]

NAS (Network Attached Storage) provides file-based data storage services to other devices on the network and are configured and controlled often by using a browser. Even though a NAS will have it's own dedicated CPU and RAM, it doesn't require a full operating system. Usually a stripped down version of a Linux or BSD OS will do (example: FreeNAS). A NAS can cost as little as 200 Euros, or could cost thousands of Euros.

So it's like hosting stuff over a network? Networking is not my strong suit I failed it in college so many times lol.

I'm still using a fourth gen. i5 CPU and DD3 RAM. But because I also use my PC for gaming and some of the new games I'm interested in require a little more hardware kick, I will be upgrading the motherboard, CPU, CPU cooler and RAM along with the NAS purchase.

As far as my wife is concerned...she loves laptops. She only uses it for documents, syncing her phone and surfing, so about every three years I buy her a new laptop for around 600 Euros.

Really? I normally don't say this because I don't like butting into people's personal lives and finances but you need an upgrade even if its something really cheap. You don't need anything current but 12th gen processors are nearly out (They will be at the end of the year or very early next year). Reason being, 4th generation was way back in the early 2010's and so many technological innovations have come out since then. But I guess if all you do is browse the internet you don't really need much of anything I suppose. I apologize for butting in it really is none of my business, when it comes to computers I'm just stuck up and nerd out over the latest and greatest things that come out I guess lol. I told my parents to upgrade to 100 mbit internet for years too because they were paying nearly $80 a month for 5 mb/s internet and I was like... you can 100 mbits for $55. What was annoying also was their internet would cut out every 5 seconds too and they would call me to fix their internet for them almost all the time lol. 99.9% of the time they just needed to reset their modem/router but I was like 100 mb/s internet will virtually never cut out and you'll never have problems with your internet unless they have an outage (which is like once a year if that). Took them years to listen to finally listen to me lol.

Yeah I think I've mentioned before but my wife is an avid gamer so she needed an upgrade herself because I bought her something when we met that was lets just say extremely underpowered to do her for the time being. We met in the early 2010's and I believe most of her parts were from the mid 2000's. I wasn't getting a lot of disability at the time so I couldn't afford to build her something more recent. I get a lot more now because I'm married and live on my own (I mostly was living with my parents when we met. Wonder why she was even interested in me at all lol!) so I can afford to build us both something from this decade now.