Removed (working) internal hard drive - any use ?

hanwellmike

Avioraz - yes that is where I live. A bit too far from Chichester I'm afraid but thanks for the offer though. It looks like I can source a caddy from the internet for about £10 and if it doesn't work for any reason it's no big loss.

googler

hanwellmike wrote: »

Niv - tanks for the suggestion. I do not have the confidence to meddle with my new desktop (plus I already have lots of capacity)

If you have the confidence to remove the drive from your old PC, and install it in a caddy, you have the capability, and, I'd suggest, the confidence to install it as a secondary drive in your new desktop.

It will work faster in there than in a caddy, because you won't have the USB controller in the way. Files will move much quicker between drives, etc.

And as someone pointed, out, this option is FREE.

andy2004

some new motherboards dont have support for IDE / PATA connections. so I dont blame the OP for saying about confidence. Mine for instance doesnt have those connections, its a gigabyte Motherboard, which is why i ended up having to buy a sata dvd burner I did have 5 ide burners but of course couldnt use them, unless i bought a ide to sata convertor which was about the same cost of a new drive.

googler

andy2004 wrote: »

some new motherboards dont have support for IDE / PATA connections. so I dont blame the OP for saying about confidence. Mine for instance doesnt have those connections, its a gigabyte Motherboard, which is why i ended up having to buy a sata dvd burner I did have 5 ide burners but of course couldnt use them, unless i bought a ide to sata convertor which was about the same cost of a new drive.

Sorry, yes - in order to use IDE drive in a SATA PC would need (for instance) a PCI/IDE interface card, at similar cost to the caddy, but the benefits in terms of tidiness, speed of use, etc ....

But the point was that the OP has successfully uninstalled his drive, installing it again doesn't require much of a confidence leap....

hanwellmike

Guys, thanks for the feedback. I did look up the procedure on you tube and installing a second drive does look quite straightforward in terms of handling the components but as has been suggested, this is an old hdd (2003 I think) and the question of compatibility arises. I think I will go for the external option and just maybe in say 2 / 3 years time when my new PC is not so ''precious'', then I might try to fit it then, just to see if I can do it.

Avoriaz

Don't use a very old disk for essential back ups without at least one other copy as it might not have much life left in it.

hanwellmike

Just a quick word to report that this has been successful. I bought an enclosure for £11.00 from Amazon and it took maybe 5 minutes to install the old drive. Easy peasy. I plugged it in to my desktop and it was recognised straightaway. So well worth the small effort and the small expenditure. I will definitely go this route again next time I de-commissioning an old PC. Thanks to all for the advice.