Hard drives are dirt cheap these days when compared to the prices from times past, especially when you consider the massive sizes of the drives currently on the market.
That’s why many people are choosing to upgrade the hard drives on their existing computers instead of buying an entire new PC.
If you’re one of those who have taken the plunge and upgraded the hard drive in your computer, you might be wondering what you can do with your old drive.
Well, you have several options, but my favorite is converting that old drive into an external USB hard drive. All you need to do is purchase an external USB hard drive enclosure and plug your drive into it. It really is that simple!
External hard drive enclosures used to be a little on the expensive side, but no more. In fact, you can find them on Amazon for less than $10 (click here
Important: Most recent hard drives have SATA connections so any SATA
compatible external enclosure will work with them.
However, if your drive was removed from an older computer it would well
have a different interface (IDE/ATA/PATA, etc.). If your drive uses one of
those legacy interfaces you’ll need to purchase an external enclosure that
supports that interface.
If you’re unsure about which interface type your drive has, feel free to
contact me I’ll help you with that. Be sure to include the brand and model
of either the drive itself or the computer it was removed from.
While your new external hard drive likely won’t be quite 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 less than 10 bucks it’s quite a bargain! Here are a couple of things to consider should you decide to convert your old internal hard drive into an external USB hard drive:
1 – If your PC has USB 3.0 ports available, you should strongly consider purchasing an enclosure that supports USB 3.0. The extra cost will be minimal but the extra data transfer speed will be phenomenal. If your computer doesn’t have USB 3.0 ports, you can easily add them.
2 – After installing the drive in the enclosure and plugging it into your PC, you’ll probably want to re-format it. Simply right-click on the the drive in Windows Explorer / File Explorer and click Format.
Important! Make sure that your new drive and its Windows installation is working before you format the old 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.
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i did this before but mines 2.0…..so its reallllllllly sloooooow..
any ideas on making it fast
Isaac, the only way to speed up a drive you installed in USB 2.0 enclosure is to move it to a USB 3.0 enclosure and then plug it into a USB 3.0 port on your computer.
Rick, I want to repurpose an internal HD from a dead laptop. I’ve installed it in an enclosure. It’s visible on my new laptop but it has two partitions. I’d like the repurposed drive to have only one partition. I’ve backed up the files I want to keep but I haven’t reformatted yet. Will reformatting result in a single partition? If not, what do I do to end up with a single partition?
Hi Jim. You first need to delete one of the partitions and then expand the remaining partition to utilize the space that was abandoned when you deleted the other one. This post from our friends at “How-To Geek” explains the procedure quite well:
https://www.howtogeek.com/235348/how-to-combine-multiple-partitions-into-a-single-partition/
Thanks for the help Rick.
You’re welcome Jim.
Hi Rick, the screen on my laptop is broken and want to save all pics the are on the hard drive it’s a window based laptop my wife has a apple computer can I transfer pics to the apple?
Steve, you can remove the hard drive from the damaged laptop and install it in an external USB drive enclosure. You can then plug it into your wife’s Mac. The Mac will be able to read the files from the laptop’s drive, allowing you to copy them to a different Mac-formatted drive. Then you’ll be able to re-format the laptop’s old drive and use it an an external USB drive for the Mac as well, if so desired.
What about programs on the old drive? There is a set of old games on my old HD that I miss. I would love to have them back.
Robert, if you clone the old drive’s contents onto the new one all the data on the old drive will be copied onto the new one, including the games.
Great info. I have an adapter that I’ve used to get information from old hard drives. But for some reason, this time it’s not showing up as an option when I plug in the USB drive into the computer. Do you think the issue could be windows versions?
The computer the old hard drive came from used 8.0; the one I first tried to copy the data to using a USB Harddrive Adapter was a 10.0; I also tried to do it onto my 7.0 computer – but in both occasions, it would not even register as an available drive.
the USB Harddrive adapter says it’s compatible with windows 7, XP/Vista. So perhaps that’s part of the problem. Do you think that the other part is that the original harddrive was configured as an 8.0 that the data can’t be read on a 7.0 windows machine?
I’m a novice windows person, so forgive me for sounding like an idiot. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
By the way, I know the Harddrive (that I want to get the data from) is working, I can hear it turning when I plug it in. It seems to register on the 10.0 machine as a “sound” when it’s plugged into the USB, but not on the older 7.0 machine.
Shellie, your drive should show up in your current version of Windows.
There’s a good chance that the drive is indeed defective even though you can hear it spinning. A bad circuit board can prevent the computer from being able to access the drive even if the drive motor is spinning.
Here’s a link to a forum thread that discusses some things you can try to coax Windows into recognizing the drive just in case it’s actually a software issue:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/external-hard-drive-not-showing-up-in-windows-10/c321d654-f44a-4d63-8fe8-073de1b0e32f?auth=1
Hi there,
I have a MacBook air and can’t see the screen anymore & wanna retrieve my pictures from it. What the best cheapest way to do so? Really appreciate your help!
Hi Jan. If your MacBook Air will still boot up (and it should if only the screen is damaged) you should be able to connect an external monitor to it and retrieve your files by backing them up using the Time Machine utility.
You’ll need a monitor that can connect to the machine’s Mini DisplayPort connector. Alternatively, if you have access to a monitor that has an HDMI connector you can use this adapter cable to connect it to your MacBook Air:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0134V3KIA/
I hope this helps, Jan. Good luck!
helo Rick,
I have a old hard drive and make it as my external hard drive but when I connect it to other PC it cannot be read and it makes a creaking sounds .. but I connect to my own PC it works properly and no creaking sounds.. how can i fix it thanks!
That’s a strange situation, LLoyd. If possible, connect the drive to a third PC and see if it works as it should. If so, it’s likely that the one PC has a hardware issue.
Another possibility is the drive works when plugged into a USB 3.0 port but not when plugged into a USB 2.0 port (USB 3.0 supplies more electrical current to attached devices than USB 2.0).
A third possibility is you’re plugging the drive into a USB port on the front of the PC instead of one on the back. Some front-panel USB ports supply less current to attached devices than rear-panel USB ports.
I have several hard drives from old laptops that I would like to convert to external drives for photos, mp3’s, etc. Should I be concerned that they will fail because of their age and would I be able to recover the files? Thanks!
Yolanda, there is always a chance one or more of the old drive will fail. What I would do is connect each hard drive to your PC one at a time and copy the files you want to save onto other media. Then you can decide which drives you want to use as external drives.