Breathing Life into Unused Hard Drives

Techs and home users are starting to find that they have a growing number of hard drives that have been removed from older systems. These discarded drives can provide a great amount of usable storage. They are virtually immune from hacker attacks, because they are not attached regularly to the system. They are less prone to loss and damage than USB memory sticks and memory cards. Manhattan provides many options to breathe life into these storage devices.
Drive Enclosures:

Most people are familiar with drive enclosures. You mount the drive into the enclosure and the enclosure connects to the system through a USB, FireWire, eSATA connections, and some have more than one connection type. They are cost efficient, the enclosure protects the hard drive, and they are easy to transport. Drive enclosures commonly fit 3.5 and 2.5 inch form factors and they can be found for older IDE drives as well as SATA drives. The only downside to enclosures is that the drives cannot be quickly swapped out (when compared to Docking Kits and Adapters) and some may require additional power connections.

Docking Kits:

For SATA drives, docking kits are becoming more popular. Like the enclosures, they connect to the computer using USB and eSATA connections (very few use FireWire). Since SATA connections are with specific layouts, they are easily docked and undocked. They can be swapped out in seconds and are great for people with multiple unused drives. Docking kits can add additional features such as card readers and USB hubs. The MANHATTAN Quick Clone Dock has software that allows for one drive to be cloned or copied to another drive, with the touch of a button. There are a variety of styles and functions to choose from and finding one that fits specific needs is not difficult. The only downside is that they do not provide support for older IDE drives.


External Drive Adapters:

Field techs and home users with IDE drives (or who rarely use their old drives) Manhattan offers a range of cables that allow for external connectivity to drives. They can connect to IDE and SATA drives of various sizes and connect to the system through USB or eSATA. Cables are more portable and easier to store than docking kits or drive enclosures. Some cables provide for a backup software feature and some will provide connections to SATA and IDE drives so they can be used at the same time. Converters are used to change between 3.5 and 2.5 inch IDE connections. The downside to these devices is that there is no protection for the drive. Since these are not normally used as a long term connection, it is rarely an issue.

No matter what method is used, old hard drives can provide secure data backups. They are simple to use and can provide much needed storage.