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Hard drives and SSDs are a bit on the expensive side these days so it makes sense to repurpose any bare drives you might have laying around and put them to good use.
If you have a working hard drive or SSD laying around you have a great option for putting it to good use: convert it into an external USB hard drive. All you need to do is purchase a very inexpensive external USB drive enclosure and plug your drive into it. It really is that simple.
External hard drive enclosures are quite inexpensive these days. In fact, you can find them on Amazon starting at around 10 bucks.
Important: Most laptop hard drives have SATA connections so virtually any 2.5 inch SATA compatible external drive enclosure will work with them.
However, if your drive was removed from a desktop computer likely a 3.5 inch drive. What’s more, it could well have a different interface type (IDE/ATA/PATA, etc.).
If your drive wasn’t removed from a fairly recent laptop you’ll need to purchase an external enclosure that matches the drive type and size.
If you’re unsure about which type of external hard drive enclosure you’ll need, feel free to contact me and I’ll help you choose one to match your drive.
Simply send me a message containing the brand and model of either the hard drive itself or the computer it was removed from and I’ll answer with a couple of suggestions.
While your new external hard drive likely won’t be anywhere near as spacious as one you could buy off the shelf today, it will likely be plenty big enough to store a backup set or two.
Besides, most of us can always use an extra external drive, right? And at around 10 bucks it’s quite a bargain.
Note: After installing the bare drive in the enclosure and plugging it into your PC, you’ll probably want to reformat it. Simply right-click on the the drive in File Explorer and click Format.
Alternatively, if you choose to not format it. That’ll instant you access to whatever files and photos might still be on the drive.
That’s all there is to it! Good luck!
Click here to check out the current selection of External USB Hard Drive Enclosures at Amazon.