Hard drive casing or how to take advantage of your old hdd ⭐️

With a simple hard disk case we can take advantage of our old HDD Did you know? Inside, we teach you how to do it easily.

Hard drives become old with the passage of time, which leads us to consider what to do with them. Many end up throwing them away because they don't know that with a case they can breathe new life into their hard drive. So, as long as the HDD is good, we can get performance out of it.

Index of contents

Buy a case for your old hard drive

A transparent external hard drive enclosure. Inside is a Seagatea Barracuda HDD.

A hard drive can get old, but it can still hold precious memories. The first solution would be to transfer that data from the old HDD to the new HDD, right? But, we don't have to let him die alone.

With the advancement of technology, mechanical HDDs are being replaced by SSDs. So, we can buy an old hard drive enclosure to turn it into an external HDD. This option is very interesting because these housings are very cheap and, in this way, we can continue using the hard disk.

Also, think that external hard drives are, for the most part, mechanical. In other words, not only do we not throw an HDD in the trash, but we also save ourselves by buying a new one to transport data. On the other hand, we can always remove the case and use it again as an internal HDD. If it is 2.5 inches, we can use it on laptops, for example.

A basic hard drive enclosure may not come to € 10, which is laughable compared to buying another HDD for these purposes. What's more, there are housings for all types of hard drives, either 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch.

Choosing the hard drive

Before buying a case, it would be nice to know which hard drive is more convenient. When we say "old HDD", we can get to refer to IDE devices, which is "quite old". So, we are going to evaluate certain aspects to choose the ideal hard disk.

Useful life

It is recommended to know the life of our hard drive to know if it is in the latest, or we can still get performance. For this, we recommend the CrystalDiskInfo program, which makes a quick and relevant diagnosis to tell us the status of the component.

Check SMART settings to see how it is. You can do it in the following way:

• Open the start menu and type " command prompt " or " cmd ".

• Write the following:

wmic diskdrive get status

You have to get 4 "OK" to know that it is perfect; otherwise… as Rosalía would say “badly”.

Factor

We have said before that hard drives can be 3.5 inches or 2.5 inches. The former usually require an external power supply in order to function, as is the case with certain external hard drives. The latter do not require extra power, so we would only need one cable.

To know a little about them: the 2.5-inch has less capacity and is the format of SSDs or HDDs for laptops; that of 3.5 inches is the factor that we see on the desktop.

When buying the case, be clear about what factor your hard drive has.

Speed ​​and capacity

There are different speeds on mechanical hard drives: 5, 400 RPM, 7, 200 RPM or even 10, 000 RPM. The higher your speed, the more it will heat up; on the contrary, the slower, the colder.

However, we differentiate these speeds according to the use you give them. In the case that we only use the hard disk from time to time for a backup or to pass us something, a high speed one is recommended. If we use it continuously, the best thing you can do is go for one of 5, 400 RPM. We say all this in the event that you have several different ones at the office or at home.

It is clear that those with more RPM will show better performance with USB 3.0 connections. However, it is not a palpable performance improvement. But, the real problem would be that USB 2.0 does not have the hardware or firmware to support large hard drives, such as those with a capacity greater than 2TB.

Interface

This aspect is very important because many people do not consider this. Assuming that your hard drives are old, they may have a PATA or SATA interface. The first is better known as IDE, which was on the market until 2005. The second was introduced in 2003 and has been a standard ever since.

As a tip, if it is IDE… it is not worth keeping it, except for nostalgia or certain cases. In this case, I would transfer all the information from the HDD and sell or discard it. On the other hand, if it is SATA, I advise you not to throw it away and to reuse it.

Choose the case

In this section we are not going to refer to the colors of the housings, but to the different functionalities of each one. Not only will you see casings, but you will also see other purposes or missions that we can accommodate.

Internal hard-drive

We can take advantage of those hard drives as internal HDDs, although here we are going to make a differentiation of sizes.

ORICO 2.5 "USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure, SATA III 6 Gb / s, for 7-inch and 9.5-mm 2.5-inch SATA Notebook HDD and SSD With the 18-month warranty and full-life technical service from the date of purchase 8, 59 EUR

In the case of the 2.5-inch ones, we can reuse them in a laptop, for example. However, it is also possible to use them on a normal desktop. All this, being aware that they will be hard drives to store data simply, since their read / write speed is going to be quite slow compared to what we can enjoy today.

I do not advise you to install Windows on these hard drives, unless you do not have others.

External hard drive

Here we will extend a little more because many people use this purpose to reuse their hard drives. In this sense, there are several things to keep in mind:

• Size and feeding. As I said before, the 3.5 inch needs external power; the 2.5 does not. On the other hand, be careful with the case you ask for: it must be according to the size of the HDD. Ports When buying a case, we may be interested in it coming with USB 3.0, for example.

Housing material

It seems silly but it is not. Typically the housings are constructed of either plastic or metal. Metal finishes are essential for heat dissipation from hard drives. So, we recommend the metal one, rather than the plastic one. Tell you that, if you are only going to use the hard disk to make backups, with the plastic casing you will have plenty.

We have to advise against " ruggedized " cases because we will be paying a lot of money to protect our hard drives. You may say "Well man, it would not be bad to protect our HDD!", But rest assured that these components do not fall off by magic, it is not something that we carry in our hands all the time.

If you are concerned about the protection of your hard drive, buy a case for it. They cost very little money and protect them when we transport them from one place to another.

Dock

Imagine that we want to convert our HDDs into external hard drives, but we do not want to transport them, we want to connect them in a fixed way. In this case, a dock is perfect because we can connect several hard drives to it and we will always have it at hand on the PC.

We can buy docks for € 20-30, being able to connect old 2.5 and 3.5-inch hard drives. In fact, we even found IDE bays for the older ones.

Tccmebius TCC-S862-DE USB 2.0 to IDE SATA Baha Dual HDD Hard Drive Docking Station with Card Reader and USB 2.0 Hub for 2.5 3.5 Inch IDE SATA I / II / III HDD SSD EUR 22.98

So far this little tutorial, I hope it has helped you and that you can give a new life to your hard drive. If you have any questions, go ahead!

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Have you reused your old HDD? Do you have a different idea to recycle old hard drives?