What do with surplus situation of low capacity 3.5" hard drives?

[cbn]

With SSD Prices falling I have noticed the prices on new and used low capacity (eg, 250GB, 320GB) 3.5" hard drives has also been falling:

Example, Virtual Larry found this refurbished Western Digital Blue WD2500AAKX 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive for $9.99 free shipping:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3512X1535351X131f9121673bb542dbce977166186ca3

According to the HD Platter database this model (with 16MB cache) has 500MB platter, so it is not that old:

http://rml527.blogspot.com/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-western-digital-35_26.html

For new drives, Gohardrive.com's ebay store has the following deals which I think are sweet spot in the pricing:

1.) New WD3200AAJS (8MB cache, 160GB to 500GB platter) for $17.99 free shipping

2.) New WD3200AAKS (16MB cache, 500GB platter) for $21.99 free shipping

The question is what to do with these relatively low capacity 3.5" Hard drives now that SSD prices are falling?

Based on my experience with a 5th generation Western Digital 160GB Raptor (32MB cache) under Windows 7 usage even this relatively fast spinning (10,000 rpm) platter drive can be slow (eg, disk swapping) once it begins to even moderately fill up. So the 7200 rpm drives I listed above (when I used as OS drives) would be even slower I'd imagine.

With that mentioned, I guess a person could always use a 250GB/320GB 7200 rpm purely for OS with just a scant amount of applications, but then I'd think a 32GB SSD (for Windows 10) or 60GB SSD (for Windows 7) would be faster and almost as cheap or as cheap (in the case of the new drives I listed).

So maybe secondary storage? Secondary storage for a kid's hand-me-down computer?

Example: 60GB SSD (eg, Hectron X1 SM2246XT MLC drive) in a used Core 2 SFF Pre-built. (eg, $23 MLC 60GB SSD + $10 refurb 250GB = $33 (about the same price as a 120GB TLC drive). This, possibly, as a kid's computer.

Other uses?

 

[VirtualLarry]

What about those "HyperDuo" (Marvell) Hybrid Drive / RAID controllers?

Might be fun to experiment with.

Edit: A search for "HyperDuo" at Newegg has some results. The cheapest one is like $40, and all of them seem to take a PCI-E x2 slot, not an x1. (Edit: Which could be problematic in an ITX / SFF case / mobo.)

Edit: What about just using them as external cold storage, using a 3.5" SATA USB dock? Use one to make a 1:1 image of a 240GB OS SSD. Have multiples for backup rotation.

 

[nerp]

I have a hard time finding a good reason to buy old low-capacity hard drives as SSD prices fall. You have to really pile on a lot of them to get any substantial amount of storage going and they generate all that heat and use so much more power than one 2TB or 4TB storage HDD. And budget machines benefit SO much from an SSD as a boot drive.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Target practice?

 

[cbn]

Edit: What about just using them as external cold storage, using a 3.5" SATA USB dock? Use one to make a 1:1 image of a 240GB OS SSD. Have multiples for backup rotation.

That is a good idea. In fact, I bought an Ultra brand 3.5" HDD external enclosure from Tiger Direct during their going out of business sale for this purpose. However, new white label 2.5" 320GB and new Western Digital 2.5" 320GB Blue drives are $25 shipped and $30 shipped respectively from Goharddrive.com's ebay store. I also believe the 2.5" usb sata enclosures are about $8 to $10 cheaper than the 3.5" ones. So that, plus the difference in portability might be a hindrance to uptake for that purpose.

EDIT:

Here are some hot-swap type enclosures that I think could work for your idea of rotating the drives for 1:1 back -up of different computers:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...8000 600006258&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&order=PRICE

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817242004&ignorebbr=1

I like that one.

 

[Sean Kyle]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817242004&ignorebbr=1

I like that one.

cool man. I'm going for it on my salary day!

 

[hal2kilo]

With SSD Prices falling I have noticed the prices on new and used low capacity (eg, 250GB, 320GB) 3.5" hard drives has also been falling:

Example, Virtual Larry found this refurbished Western Digital Blue WD2500AAKX 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive for $9.99 free shipping:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3512X1535351X131f9121673bb542dbce977166186ca3

According to the HD Platter database this model (with 16MB cache) has 500MB platter, so it is not that old:

http://rml527.blogspot.com/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-western-digital-35_26.html

For new drives, Gohardrive.com's ebay store has the following deals which I think are sweet spot in the pricing:

1.) New WD3200AAJS (8MB cache, 160GB to 500GB platter) for $17.99 free shipping

2.) New WD3200AAKS (16MB cache, 500GB platter) for $21.99 free shipping

The question is what to do with these relatively low capacity 3.5" Hard drives now that SSD prices are falling?

Based on my experience with a 5th generation Western Digital 160GB Raptor (32MB cache) under Windows 7 usage even this relatively fast spinning (10,000 rpm) platter drive can be slow (eg, disk swapping) once it begins to even moderately fill up. So the 7200 rpm drives I listed above (when I used as OS drives) would be even slower I'd imagine.

With that mentioned, I guess a person could always use a 250GB/320GB 7200 rpm purely for OS with just a scant amount of applications, but then I'd think a 32GB SSD (for Windows 10) or 60GB SSD (for Windows 7) would be faster and almost as cheap or as cheap (in the case of the new drives I listed).

So maybe secondary storage? Secondary storage for a kid's hand-me-down computer?

Example: 60GB SSD (eg, Hectron X1 SM2246XT MLC drive) in a used Core 2 SFF Pre-built. (eg, $23 MLC 60GB SSD + $10 refurb 250GB = $33 (about the same price as a 120GB TLC drive). This, possibly, as a kid's computer.

Other uses?

Door stop.

 

[whm1974]

Target practice?

Trap or Skeet?

 

[Puffnstuff]

Man put them up on craigslist and somebody will buy them.

 

[PliotronX]

Damn, that is a good idea about keeping an image of the SSD, VL! I have also been experimenting with tiered storage spaces which is like HyperDuo only you can't include the boot drive so I have found it being useful in a virtual host for the VHD or VMDK files.

 

[Mr Evil]

Extract their rare earth magnets. Send the rest for recycling.

 

[jimbob200521]

Get a case with a lot of 3.5/5.25 bays and set up a massive oversize RAID. Say use 4 250gb drives per array and have 4 arrays. That'd be a total of 4tb of storage. Then get a single external 4tb drive to back it all up on. I don't see any problems with this idea (other than being idiotic).

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

get a decent usb 3 to hdd adapter. and use em for cheap high(ish) capacity backup media. cheap enough to rotate them. for example 6 drives, backup to the oldest every month. or backup to two drives each month, one set at home, the other offsite.

 

[JimmiG]

I already have a drawer full of old 3.5" drives in the ~250 - 640 GB range. They just aren't worth plugging into anything even if you've got the ports for them, because of the heat, noise or waiting for them to spin up every time you open Explorer...

$20-ish for 320 GB isn't a very good deal either. That's the equivalent of paying nearly $200 for 3 TB.

 

[cbn]

$20-ish for 320 GB isn't a very good deal either. That's the equivalent of paying nearly $200 for 3 TB.

Yes, price per GB is not that good.

In fact, a person can buy New Hitachi 2TB 3.5" drives (older model with 400GB platters) for $50 shipped on ebay last time I checked.

But $20 is less than $50 and some people will not use the extra capacity the 2TB has to offer.