What to do with a bunch of old IDE HDDs?

[turtle]

I've just lost two machines but they leave behind the legacy or IDE drives. 3 Seagate 250GB, 1 Seagate 300GB and 1 Maxtor 300GB. I can't fit any more into my Media Center PC other wise I'd put one of the 300s in there. I don't want to build another system either. As it is, when my new server shows up I'm going to pull the 160GB SATA that's in it and replace with two WD Black 1TB SATA drives.

Oh then there's this stack of 2.5" drives! 1 Hitachi 160GB SATA (Retail), (all the rest are Apple branded) 1 Fujitsu 40GB IDE, 1 Fujitsu 80GB SATA, 1 Seagate 60GB SATA, 1 Hitachi 80GB SATA and another Hitatchi that's 120GB SATA.

What should I do with all these drives? I've thought of a RAID box but I can't seem to find something that is worthwhile for IDE. I've seen nothing for 2.5" drives. I guess I could eBay them or something, but the storage space seems useful.

[Partial]

Pipe bomb.

In all seriousness, you could probably set-up a pretty cool raid array

[tomoe]

Craigslist or eBay them as a package and get a drive(s) you can put to use?

[turtle]

I'd love to do the array, but cost is a factor. I don't want to put money into old tech if it's going to cost more than I'll gain. I don't mind some, but one enclosure each for the 3.5" drives is more than I want to spend.

[JohnnyTheA]

Keep your data on the drives and throw them into a land fill to leave your legacy to future archaeologists...

Or you could try to get a Drobo.

JTA

[turtle]

Drobo doesn't have a PATA/IDE option. I can get a 2 bay enclosure from OWC for $80 (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW912AL2/). I was hoping for one case for the five drives. This would be daisy chaining and suck with FW800. I already have one of these enclosures and it's pretty good. Though I did have to exchange mine because the fan died in it. They wouldn't ship me the part but made me ship back my unit. :rolleyes:

Surely there is another option out there...

[torifile]

I asked a similar question a while back and in my case (since my drives were smaller than yours are) it didn't even make financial sense to get the enclosures needed for the drives. I was probably going to gain like a terabyte of space with my handful of drives and it would have cost me as much as a new terabyte drive would have. At a multiple of the risk for data loss, too.

[rampancy]

Well, you could always put them up on Kijiji or Freecycle. It's amazing how fast IDE drives are being phased out; at my university computer/bookstore, they've all but vanished.

I'm also looking for IDE drives for an old MDD G4 I'm fixing up, so if you're interested in selling them, let me know (shipping might be a factor, though)..

[turtle]

You would think there would be something out there for someone like me with a handful of useful drives. I know there is, I have faith! :D

[curiousuburb]

You could shoot them and film the results as a definitive "drives ain't bulletproof" study. ;)

[JohnnyTheA]

Drobo doesn't have a PATA/IDE option.

In that case, if they are old drives, I'd probably just buy USB cases and use them for non-critical storage or I'd recycle them (sell them on EBay for $20 or give them to the E-waste folks). If they are older drives they WILL fail sooner than your newer ones statistically and trying to do a complex RAID arrangement with those could be tricky. Depends on how much time you have.

JTA

[turtle]

Well, I guess I'll look at selling them off or maybe even offering them here for shipping. I dunno, there's plenty of life left in them, but once they die they are done and never to be replaced. Sucks really.

So what about the 2.5" drives, eBay? Is there even a RAID setup for 2.5" drives? Maybe I could build my own. :D

[Kickaha]

I'm in a similar boat, where I have 2 250GB drives, and 2 80GB drives, all 3.5" IDE, in four OWC USB/FW enclosures. I'd like to get a couple of larger drives now, but I *hate* to just ditch these things. But... finding a 3.5" IDE drive to fit in an existing enclosure is really rather difficult. So I'm looking at literally just retiring these poor things en masse, and getting a couple of externals. A 2TB drive for OTA backups to the AirPort Extreme, and a 1TB for DVR use.

Still wish there was something *reasonable* I could do with the others though, seems a shame.

[709]

I have piles of IDE drives as well, and I've been using them for project/system backups. Bought a cheap USB>IDE cable (like this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002)) and I just fill 'em up, label the plastic OEM boxes they shipped in, and stack them with all my DVD-R project backups. There's really no other use I've found. :\

[PB PM]

Getting replacement IDE drives is an issue. Both my current external enclosures that have FW are IDE, which will need to be replaced as I need more space and the few new IDE drives out there are way overpriced compared to SATA drives. Right now, I just use my old IDE drives for backups of my Aperture Library.

[Gargoyle]

Dismantle and recycle.

[Partial]

Sell for money. Buy something cool with Money.

[Niall]

I have carried a 3.5in platter around in my lifejacket for a few years. Originally 2GB or so.

Makes a great signalling mirror.