Reuse Old Hard Drives

If you’ve had a computer (or computers) for a while, most likely you’ve accumulated a few hard drives through the result of upgrades or friends who couldn’t find a use for old drives.

Now, you might have room in your tower for these extra drives, or you might not.  Or, you might even be using a laptop.  So, what can you do?

It’s simple—get an external drive enclosure.  For about $30-$40, you can get yourself something that you can carry anywhere, use to transfer data between computers (that won’t fit on a USB flash drive), or use to backup some of your stuff.

Here’s some enclosures you can get on newegg (Apricorn and Rosewill being some of the more reliable brands)

Drive enclosures in general now have the option of using SATA or IDE hard drives, and usually come with USB 2.0, eSATA, FireWire 400, and/or FireWire 800.  So, be sure to look at the specs to make sure you’re buying the one that fits your needs.

As a side note, Apricorn drive enclosures that come with EZ Gig II Backup & Disaster Recovery Software is really a rebranded OEM copy of Acronis True Image 8.  The only limitation to this OEM copy is that you can’t image to a network drive; only to an internal or external drive.

(Originally published on a now-defunct blog)