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Are 500GB 3.5 inch drives even worth bothering with anymore?!
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Are 500GB 3.5 inch drives even worth bothering with anymore?!

Hi LET

Had a few old Lenovo desktops in for servicing. Replacement of thermal paste SSD upgrades etc

I now have 6 fully cleaned 500gb drives. Ideas on what to do with them?

Throw all 6 in a RAID 0 for 3TB? Seems more of a pain putting them all in a case and powering them all for such little storage

Any other ideas to save me crushing them? :)

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Comments

  • I mean the only thing they would be useful for IMO is storage/backup, so the question is, would 3TB space be useful to you? and RAID0 seems pointless, I'd go with someone that allows the failure of at least one drive if used for that

    If storage/backup wouldn't be useful to you I'd just crush them or wipe and sell/give them away

  • Use them in surveillance environments, maybe, like DVR/NVR, esp. if they are just 5400rpm. Or, maybe just use them to host files for a media server locally, using something like Jellyfin.

  • shellshell Member

    buy 2.5" case for external hdd ?

  • Spare cold storage, otherwise ewaste. A 500gb microsd probably performs faster and like 100x more energy efficient.

  • @shell said:
    buy 2.5" case for external hdd ?

    And then, buy a 3.5" converter and solder a power board to accept 12V power supply on the 2.5" adaptor?

    Thanked by 1vr10
  • its 2025 who uses HDD nowadays still?!

  • shellshell Member

    @noob404 said:

    @shell said:
    buy 2.5" case for external hdd ?

    And then, buy a 3.5" converter and solder a power board to accept 12V power supply on the 2.5" adaptor?

    sorry, i thought it was a 2.5" hard drive

  • noob404noob404 Member
    edited January 26

    @shell said:

    @noob404 said:

    @shell said:
    buy 2.5" case for external hdd ?

    And then, buy a 3.5" converter and solder a power board to accept 12V power supply on the 2.5" adaptor?

    sorry, i thought it was a 2.5" hard drive

    I was just kidding. Pardon me.
    BTW, 2.5" are still good for PS3 and PS4.

  • gksgks Member

    @Alfie said:
    Hi LET

    Had a few old Lenovo desktops in for servicing. Replacement of thermal paste SSD upgrades etc

    I now have 6 fully cleaned 500gb drives. Ideas on what to do with them?

    Throw all 6 in a RAID 0 for 3TB? Seems more of a pain putting them all in a case and powering them all for such little storage

    Any other ideas to save me crushing them? :)

    They consume more power than 2.5. Are you using workstation? Taping them on side wall, one option for SSD due to lightweight. I won't stick to the side of the cabinet which house the fan, the vibration would cause trouble for Mechanical HDD. You can keep in any orientation, only ensure that away from vibration. > @cybertech said:

    its 2025 who uses HDD nowadays still?!

    I have 8 of them. May still buy but 2.5 SAS

  • emghemgh Member, Megathread Squad

    Save them for 2-3 more years and they might have vintage value

  • Probably only good for cold backups since the power/noise will be too much if used in a live environment.

    Sensetive encrypted data backups and refresh it every couple of months is great.

  • ObelousObelous Member
    edited January 26

    @Alfie said: Ideas on what to do with them?

    Put them somewhere and forget about them, I have like 10x 600gb SAS drives just sitting on a bookshelf, can't be bothered doing anything with them. I temporarily used 8 of them for a diy NAS but it was (unsurprisingly) loud and hot, lol.

  • AlfieAlfie Member

    As most of you have said there isn’t much I can do

    I could put them in a pc case but for the sake of 3TB it simply isn’t worth the power bill given that you can just use an external usb 2.5

    I looked in my local area and have been offered £1 each for them. Maybe I can sell them and buy a Big Mac meal :)

  • @Alfie said:
    As most of you have said there isn’t much I can do

    I could put them in a pc case but for the sake of 3TB it simply isn’t worth the power bill given that you can just use an external usb 2.5

    I looked in my local area and have been offered £1 each for them. Maybe I can sell them and buy a Big Mac meal :)

    I would have bought if I were at your place. Many companies run old computers where cheap 5400 HDD are enough for day to day work.

  • My recommendation:

    If you value time, trash them, troubleshooting (due to their old age) will be necessary soon, at least several hours will be invested over their lifetime, for that money, simply buy a new 10TB HDD for 100eur

    If you have no job and money is scarce or you have fun with DIY, go build yourself a RAID-Z2 pool with TrueNAS and an old laptop, using an external 6-bay enclosure from eBay

  • interservermikeinterservermike Member, Patron Provider

    We sell old drives for scrap by the pound.

  • jndjnd Member

    I don't bother with anything below 12TB but that's because I need to save a lot of raw video files.

  • tenjitenji Member

    I think 75% that still available were too old.
    Unless it was high end versions (i.e. wd black scorpio) or 7200rpm one [ & also check their remaining lifetime with sentinel ], it better just sell them locally.

  • put your valuable files on them (encrypted) and put it in your friends' basement (packed airtight)
    i recommend alu foil and plastic foil alternating (faraday cage)
    in few years or decades you might want them back after total disaster

    thats what i did with mine

  • LeviLevi Member
    edited January 26

    Degradation will kill those drives after 10-15 years, what long term storage are you all talking? Bit rot is real. Megaupload case clearly showed that.

  • yoursunnyyoursunny Member, IPv6 Advocate

    @cybertech said:
    its 2025 who uses HDD nowadays still?!

    We are still running 40GB HDD, attached via USB 2.0 PATA adapter.
    The HDD is from our first laptop, purchased in 2005.

    Every night we hear scratching noise from the HDD.
    Is it infected with ghosts?

  • davidedavide Member
    edited January 26

    I sold 3x 40GB PATA hard disks just this week, for about 4€ each. No idea why people still buy these. Two of them were even broken. I guess the guy never took his backups.

  • raza19raza19 Veteran

    @emgh said:
    Save them for 2-3 more years and they might have vintage value

    I have a 1 Gig 3.5 IDE hard drive that still works, wt r u willing to pay for it :D

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • emghemgh Member, Megathread Squad

    @raza19 said:

    @emgh said:
    Save them for 2-3 more years and they might have vintage value

    I have a 1 Gig 3.5 IDE hard drive that still works, wt r u willing to pay for it :D

    Nothing sorry I changed my mind

    Thanked by 2ralf raza19
  • If you already have the cables/enclosures necessary and spare USB ports, maybe I’d throw them on a gaming console. For a current gen console they can play previous gen games off them directly or backup a current gen game. The older systems were developed with 5400rpm drives in mind so while SSD is better, it’s not always super beneficial. If you have a previous gen console, going back to the 360, then you might be able to store a fair few games.

    Or maybe use them with a raspberry Pi on some application where read/writes would wear out a micro SD card.

    Otherwise in a NAS if there’s a free and available slot in the meantime. Not efficient electricity wise but cheaper than buying a drive short term if you want a bit extra storage.

    Failing that I’d probably sell or recycle them. I also wouldn’t spend money on enclosures or adapters for any of the above if you don’t have them already, and won’t have a future use case for them.

  • I still have 3.5 inch floppy disks somewhere in storage. I would need a drive to test them, but I don't know if this solution helps too much.

  • davidedavide Member
    edited January 27

    @default said:
    I still have 3.5 inch floppy disks somewhere in storage. I would need a drive to test them, but I don't know if this solution helps too much.

    HODL stock.

    Diamond hands.

    I too have heaps of obsolescent trash that is more pain to get rid of than leave it where it is.

    Anyone wants a PS2 keyboard from 1995? Wow it's mechanical and all that...

  • @davide said:

    @default said:
    I still have 3.5 inch floppy disks somewhere in storage. I would need a drive to test them, but I don't know if this solution helps too much.

    HODL stock.

    Diamond hands.

    I too have heaps of obsolescent trash that is more pain to get rid of than leave it where it is.

    Anyone wants a PS2 keyboard from 1995? Wow it's mechanical and all that...

    Mechanical old keyboard?! Now that is gold! Those were made to last.

  • ralfralf Member

    I have a load of 200GB drives from about 20 years ago, but they're basically too small for anything useful now. At the time, they weren't NAS'd, just in 5.25" bay caddies that I hot-swapped when I wanted to back up onto them.

    Every time I keep thinking about making a home-NAS box out of them, I realise that I'd need more storage to actually be useful, and then I see the price of 2TB NVMe roughly on a par with 2TB HDDs, and decide that it simply doesn't make sense to replace them with bigger HDDs.

    For something that's not in use 24/7, but will likely be switched on all the time, you also have to consider energy costs. Sure, HDDs can spin down, but it's all too easy for them to get woken up by housekeeping tasks, and if it's part of a RAID and you maybe have 6 drives that end up being on all the time, that's a lot of power being wasted. Also, to physically fit them all, I'd probably want to resize an existing large case and an older motherboard that has enough SATA and IDE to run them all. These are also pretty inefficient run 24/7.

    And so every time I thing about it, I soon abandon the need for home-based data-hoarding. I do still have backups of all my PCs, but there's a copy online on one of my larger borg targets, and two local copies on external drives that I back up to less frequently. And all my real "work" (fairly low storage requirements) is backed up in git which also has 4 different daily backups.

    So, I still have my stack of 200GB drives with nothing much useful to do with them. I don't even connect them up as one-off backup targets any more, because I could fit the contents of all 10 of them on one external 2TB drive instead. They're literally just e-waste at this point.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    No.

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