Upgrading or replacing a Laptop - Use the old HDD

[jimbo45]

Hi all
If any of you are upgrading the HDD in a laptop or getting a new one -- DON'T throw the old HDD away.

For around 7 USD you can buy an enclosure which will convert the old HDD into a very small portable self powered USB external drive.

Now what I do with these is to use them for backing up OS'es whether from a laptop or a workstation and then put these away.

A 160 GB drive even can store several backups on it -- especially if you have (and you should have) a separate OS partition from data partitions.

Even a largish W7 installation complete with Office (full version) Adobe suite CS5 etc will backup to around a 20 GB file using a backup program with decent compression.

You don't have to worry about speed or performance of these -- they are simply being used for storing my OS (and Virtual OS'es) backups.

I've got 3 of these - and its far far easier storing these than having zillions of CD's around the place.

Even an old 80 or 100 GB laptop drive will be useful for this purpose especially a typical OS backup will be normally around 15 GB with a decent backup program giving good (lossless) compression.

You can NEVER have too much backup BTW.

You can also use these for offline backup of critical files, some music etc etc.

Don't chuck away perfectly good hardware which might save you loads of time in an emergency restore / data recovery operation.

Removing a HDD from a laptop is very very simple --all you need to know is how to use a screwdriver -- nothing else required.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[CreepinJesus]

I did this when I went down the SSD route for my laptop. I stuck the old 500GB drive into a $20 (it had eSATA) enclosure and anything large I can put on there.