How to reuse your old hard drives with a dock

If we update our computer over time, surely a larger hard drive has been one of our first upgrades , but what about those 'old' hard drives that we no longer use? we can still take advantage of them.

Use hard drives with a USB Dock

If you have old hard drives you can use them through an external USB dock. It is a quick and easy way to interconnect your drives with a PC via USB, instead of the SATA cables that run on your computer.

It is as simple as it sounds. The dock has a slot where you connect the hard drive, then your PC will recognize it as an external drive so you can move data there.

These docks are usually compatible with 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch units, but check before buying one of these peripherals to see if they are compatible with the disk or disks you have, since not all of them support both formats.

Make it portable

You can always use a hard drive in your laptop, it is an interesting option, especially with 2.5-inch drives that are smaller.

This is an operation similar to that of the previous dock, but the idea is to take the disk and the dock with you to use it next to your laptop. It is a somewhat more 'fancy' option but it also depends on what type of unit you are going to use. 2.5-inch discs are usually the most portable option and you will not need an external power supply to work, since they are powered by the USB connector, unlike 3.5-inch discs.

It is not the most 'comfortable' option but it will always be cheaper than spending on a new disk for your laptop.

Use with Xbox One

Expanding the Xbox One's internal storage with an external hard drive is also a wise option.

XBOX One supports external hard drives and you will need a dock like the one we detailed before it is compatible with a USB 3.0 connection, this game console does not support connections to external hard drives with a USB 2.0 interface. Also, the disk must be 256GB or more.

As we see, there are several options to use those hard drives that we have out there forgotten with a minimal investment, since a USB 3.0 dock is costing around 30 euros.