Storage Triage--How to Upgrade and Reuse Your Old Hard Drive

Posted 01/27/2010 at 9:00pm | by Mark Edward Soper

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Bidding Farewell to ATA/IDE Hard Disk Drives

With only one ATA/IDE 40-pin interface available in most recent desktop systems that's already busy taking care of a rewritable DVD or Blu-Ray drive, it's time to find new uses for ATA/IDE drives, even if they're larger than the 250GB/160GB capacity cutoff. While these drives (especially ATA100/ATA133 class drives) have about the same real-world performance as first-generation SATA (1.5Gbps) drives, newer SATA 3Gbps and the newest SATA 6Gbps drives outclass them in performance as well as capacity.

What about ATA/IDE optical drives? While SATA interfaces are now available for optical drives, there's little real-world difference in performance, so there's no reason to replace a late-model ATA/IDE-interface optical drive with an SATA model.

Planning Drive Upgrades to the Terabyte Class

If you haven't moved into the Terabyte class yet, think about backup and disk interface performance before making your move.

Your backup drive should be at least 50% larger than your system hard disk, especially if you plan to add a lot of data to your drive or anticipate a lot of application and data "churn."

To get the most performance for your storage buck, consider using the new SATA 6Gbps interface for your new internal hard disk, and don't skimp on backup speed, either. USB 2.0's 480Mbps isn't fast enough for big backups. Instead, look for external hard disks that support eSATA (you can turn spare SATA ports on your motherboard into eSATA ports with an inexpensive bracket) or the new USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed USB) standard.

Seagate and Western Digital both use licensed versions of Acronis True Image for disk cloning and setup, making it relatively simple to transfer your existing installation to a larger hard disk.

So, what are your options for your existing drives?

Salvaging Mobile Drives

You can connect mobile SATA drives to any SATA host adapter, as they use the same SATA power and data connectors as desktop SATA drives. And, they convert very nicely into bus-powered USB drives you can use for desktop or mobile storage or with media streamers by installing them in a mobile drive enclosure; for maximum versatility, choose a mobile drive enclosure that also includes an eSATA port.

Enclosures are also useful for recycling 160GB and larger ATA/IDE mobile drives, but keep in mind that the portable version of ATA/IDE requires an adapter if you want to use it in a desktop computer or an enclosure designed for desktop drives.

Safe Drive Recycling and Disposal

If you've decided that some of your drives would be better off out of  your hands, don't leave important data on them. For maximum security, use a Department of Defense (DoD)-compliant disk overwriting program, such as those included in some versions of Norton Utilities, McAfee, and other system protection suites. A theoretically less-secure method is to perform zero-fill writes across the entire disk. Most diagnostic programs provided by drive vendors offer this option for disk erasure or to swap bad sectors for spare sectors.

After overwriting your drives, what next? You can sell them (or give them away to friends and relatives on tight storage budgets) or send them to electronic recyclers (some of whom might overwrite the drives for you), or, if you're the paranoid sort, dismantle the drives yourself and break the platters with a hammer before dropping them off for recycling.