What to do with "old" hard drives

Tegeril

Platinum Member
Apr 2, 2003
2,907
5
81
I'm sitting here staring at a stack of four Seagate 400GB (7200.10) hard drives that just... I have no use for right now, but given that 1.5TB drives are down to $70 now, these feel pretty low in value but also are entirely not useless to...someone. But with the cost to ship them it's getting difficult to really convince a person they want something like this.

What are you guys doing with old drives like this?
 

BrightCandle

Diamond Member
Mar 15, 2007
4,762
0
76
Giving them to my sisters. It costs more to put them in a NAS and raid them to make a backup device but it ensures they don't loose the pictures of the little ones because they stored it on their crappy laptops.
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
Super Moderator
Mar 4, 2000
27,370
238
106
I just sent two packages of old HDDs to friends. One will use them to help less fortunate seniors in a local computer club, and the other will upgrade a friend who's not rolling in dough.
 

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
Get an external dock and use them as giant flash drives. Rotate them for backups so you have multiple versions of folders and files.
 

nsafreak

Diamond Member
Oct 16, 2001
7,093
3
81
Well if you don't already have a fileserver but you have the parts lying around for them that'd be one use for them. I have my server setup with a 3Ware 9550 controller currently running five 500GB drives in a RAID 5 array. Sure I plan on upgrading them sometime in the near future but the performance from them is just fine.
 

Tegeril

Platinum Member
Apr 2, 2003
2,907
5
81
In my case I've got an unraid server with 6x1TB drives in it right now so I do have the storage space I'm looking for (plus CrashPlan Unlimited). I suppose I could keep certain backups on these...