…it doesn’t have any bad sectors?
Are you replacing it with a larger drive? Are you switching the old drive to an SSD?
I have a number of old drives (mechanical drives) which I still use. Buy an external case for it with (probably a USB connection) and plug it into a spare USB port. The system will take a short while and should give you a new drive letetr for it. You can use the drive for backups or to copy your photos, etc. Then just ‘eject’ the drive and set it on the shelf for later. If it is not powered up constantly it will last a long time.
In my Windows tower (desktop) systems I have multiple hard drives inside and external.
If you have a laptop this is coming out of, you can still do the above.
If the external case is smaller and/or based upon the drive size, you may or may not need an external power for the case.
I didn’t know that! I assumed that the computer died because of the hard drive! I do have 2 old drives that are just stored. So - I can connect them to USB and see their contents?
If you do get rid of it…make sure to take it apart and shred the actual disc first…
Yes you can attach old drives to a running PC to see the contents. Somewhat smaller capacity drives (perhaps SSDs and small mechanical drives) do not need extra power, but physical large drives (in the terabyte sizes) need external power.
Most desktops used to have room for at least 2 hard drives and some had connections for 4. One of those connections would be the system drive and another an internat CD/DVD drive. So you could mount and use another 2 physical drives in a desktop. There were also extra power cables for the physical drives.
Using an external drive through USB can be slower than connecting a drive inside a desktop. One plus for an external case with a drive in it is that the drive can be an old IDE drive, SCSI or SSD. The only limiting factor is that the external case has to have the right drive connector and aUSB on the end for the computer. External drives can be attached to generally any USB port that a computer has although there are various ‘flavors’ of USB with differing speeds. Some TV’s and Rokus might allow you to access media on that same external drive by just plugging it in to the device USB port.
When a neighbor had a disk drive that would not boot because of errors, I took it out of his computer, put in in an external enclosure and plugged that enclosure into my home computer USB port. I then browsed and copied all his files for him. NOTE: Certainly in the newest Windows versions and in some previous ones, Microsoft has enabled encryption on the disk and you may not be able to just pull a drive and attach it to another system. Of course, you can turn off encryption before a failure, etc but I am sure Microsoft may force encryption as a safety procedure whether you want it or not. Granted, being able to physically remove a drive, adding it to another system and copying data when a drive is not encrypted, does allow someone to access data on a persons computer without any log file entry and without knowing any passwords as the passwords are only used to allow you to boot from that system drive, load an operating system and review the data. My procedure ignores any passwords, so yes it is not a secure system then.
This is probably more info that you need. People have asked me what time it was and I tell them how to build a clock.
Define “old”.
I write software for a living. Once a drive hit 3 years, it was due for replacement. That was back in the day of the click click spinners. SSDs do far better.
Two real questions - is there a problem? next why are you asking?
As for terminal disposal hammer it.
I feel like we all need to be computer savvy “experts” to make our computers work anymore.
I don’t do anything fancy with my computer — just emails, websites, and personal documents. I would love a lower-tech computer without AI assistants and all of these hidden tweaks that are needed for decent performance!
I think that every high-tech “improvement” on computers, cars, TVs, etc. just make things harder to work with!
Perhaps I am becoming a Luddite!
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My newest desktop computer is 10 years old. I earned it by working for a volunteer organization that refurbishes donated hardware. The cost for it would have been $35. I do the same things with my desktop as you described.
The operating system is free Linux Mint. I think the current version of Mint is much simpler to use than Windows. That could be because I have used Windows very little for the last 10 years.
Try it. You may like it.
Hear hear! We have been on LM for quite a few years. Before that we were on Ubuntu, but the newer Ubuntu re-did the graphics to make it work like Windoze 8 remember that debacle? No way we were going to re-learn! Kept the Ubuntu a couple of years past its “support” date and moved to Linux Mint because it works a lot like windoze and an ordinary user has little trouble. Then they discover virtual workspaces…
As far as old hard drive is concerned… At this point I dump anything under 500 mB. Then of course any drive that does conch out.