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 3.0 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 choose the right one. Simply send me a message containing the brand and model of either the hard drive itself or the computer it was removed from.
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!
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 computer doesn’t have USB 3.0 ports, you can probably add some for about the cost of a good pizza.
2 – After installing the 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 Windows Explorer / File Explorer and click Format.
Important! Make sure your new drive and its Windows installation is working as it should and That you’ve copied all of your files off the old drive before you format it!
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.
Bonus tip: Want to make sure you never miss one of my tips? Click here to join my Rick’s Tech Tips Facebook Group!
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
Want to ask Rick a tech question? Click here and send it in!
If you found this post useful, would you mind helping me out by sharing it? Just click one of the handy social media sharing buttons below.