Taking ~19-28 HDDs to local recycler next week -- include 3x each 4TB & 5TB HGST NAS, or sell or keep them?

[PianoPlayer88Key]

Hey all...  So I'm getting rid of about 20 or 25 or so old HDDs of various types and sizes.  I'm planning to take them to a local charity / recycler next week, but there's a few drives I'm still trying to decide on and I would like some input on that.

 

The main drives in question are 6 HGST Deskstar NAS drives - 3x 4TB (HDN724040ALE640) and 3x 5TB (HDN726050ALE610).  Should I...

 

• Include them in the box with the older / smaller drives?
• Try to sell them? (I don't have a way to ship them, though, and I would like to keep the retail boxes for some of my other drives that are lacking boxes; also if I sold them I'd prefer to sell all at once), or
• Keep them? (I don't think I need to though, and I'm trying to pare down my number of hard drives.  Also a single 14TB I have holds more than 3x 4TB and a bit less than 3x 5TB.)

 

My data for now fits on an 8TB and 10TB HDD, plus about another 2 or 4 TB or so on several SSDs.

Newer 3.5" drives I have are 4x 8TB (3 HGST, 1 Toshiba), 2x 10TB HGST, and 2x 14TB Toshiba.  (The plan is to split them evenly - half for data, half for backups, hence why I have an even number of each capacity.)

 

Total list of drives in spoiler below, hope I haven't forgotten any.    (lol .. I was tempted to convert the capacities to base 2 / 1024, so for example 250GB would be like 233GB, 1TB would be 931GB, 5TB would be 4.55TB, 14TB would be like 12.7TB, etc.)

Spoiler

Keeping

Unsure, leaning toward not keeping

Unsure, leaning toward keeping

Getting Rid Of

{Reason for keeping, may not always be specified}

 

• 3.5" PATA HDD
  • 8.4GB IBM DTTA-350840 {smallest & oldest drive that still works, also "fastest" in the sense that it only takes about 12 minutes to do a sequential copy that fills the entire drive.  Would like to find something under ~85 MB someday though.}
  • 8.4GB IBM DTTA-350840 (dead) {keep for crafts / harvesting parts like magnets, etc?}
  • 20.4GB Maxtor 32049H2 {alternative to 8.4GB IBM, faster MB/s transfer speed, close to same fill-entire-drive time. Was able to fit an install of Windows 10 on it a while back  Had it booting from a Dell D830 laptop - data cable with a USB to IDE cable (since deceased), power off my Corsair AX760 in my desktop.}
  • 20.4GB Maxtor 32049H2
  • 40GB IBM IC35L040AVVN07-0
  • 40GB IBM IC35L040AVVN07-0
  • 40GB Maxtor 6E040L0
  • 40GB Maxtor 6E040L0 (dead) {maybe keep for crafts / parts like magnets, etc}
  • 40GB Maxtor 6E040L0
  • 80GB WD800BB (system recognizes it as WD800JB but paper&ink label says BB) {was the first HDD I ever personally bought with my own $}
  • 250GB WD2500JB
• 3.5" SATA HDD <= 2TB
  • 750GB WD7500AAKS {first SATA HDD I bought}
  • 750GB WD7501AALS
  • 1TB WD10EADS
  • 1.5TB WD15EADS
  • 1.5TB WD15EADS
  • 2TB WD20EADS
  • 2TB WD20EZRX
• 3.5" SATA HDD > 2TB
  • 4TB HGST HDN724040ALE640
  • 4TB HGST HDN724040ALE640
  • 4TB HGST HDN724040ALE640
  • 5TB HGST HDN726050ALE610
  • 5TB HGST HDN726050ALE610
  • 5TB HGST HDN726050ALE610
  • 8TB HGST HDN728080ALE604 {has some data on it, consolidated from older / smaller drives}
  • 8TB HGST HDN728080ALE604 {for more data storage}
  • 8TB HGST HDN728080ALE604 {for more data backup}
  • 8TB Toshiba HDWG180UZSVA {just bought, probably to be backup of other 8TB drive currently with data}
  • 10TB HGST HDN721010ALE604 {has some data on it, consolidated from older / smaller drives}
  • 10TB HGST HDN721010ALE604 {to be backup of other 10TB drive}
  • 14TB Toshiba MG07ACA14TE {just bought, for more data storage}
  • 14TB Toshiba MG07ACA14TE {just bought, for more data backup}
• 2.5" SATA HDD
  • 1TB Toshiba MQ01ABD100
  • 1TB HGST HTS541010A9E680
  • 1TB HGST HTS541010A9E680
  • 2TB Seagate ST2000LM003
• 2.5" SATA SSD
  • 240GB Crucial CT240BX300SSD1 {Windows 10 SSD for now for experiments with older Dell D830 laptop ; if I build a NAS may repurpose this as a boot drive.}
  • 256GB Crucial CT256M550SSD1 {Linux boot SSD in my i7-4790K desktop}
  • 256GB Transcend TS256GSSD25S-M
  • 256GB Transcend TS256GSSD25S-M
  • 500GB Team T253TV500G3C301 {just bought, bootable clone from a couple years ago from CT256M550SSD1 (was on WD7501AALS), includes some older programs not currently installed}
  • 500GB Team T253TV500G3C301 {just bought, another bootable CT256M550SSD1 clone (was on WD10EADS) - btw both are Linux/Windows dual-boot.}
  • 1TB WD WDS100T2B0A-00SM50 {just bought, has some Linux VMs for VirtualBox}
  • 1TB WD WDS100T2B0A-00SM50 {just bought, extra for now, will probably end up being another OS boot drive or more VMs, or maybe both}
  • 1.05TB Crucial CT1050MX300SSD1 {data storage in i7-6700K laptop}
  • 1.05TB Crucial CT1050MX300SSD1 {data storage in i7-6700K laptop}
• M.2 SATA SSD
  • 250GB Crucial CT250MX200SSD6 {Windows 10 boot drive in i7-6700K laptop}
• M.2 NVMe SSD
  • 1TB Samsung MZ-V7E1T0BW {Windows 10 boot drive in i7-4790K desktop}
  • 2TB Silicon Power SU002TBP34A80M28AB {just bought, data storage & pagefile in i7-6700K laptop}

 

As for retail boxes (with shock-resistant packaging material), I have 2 boxes from older WD drives, as well as boxes from the 4TB through 10TB HGST NAS drives and the 8TB Toshiba N300 drive.

 

Also does anyone know where I could inexpensively get some other kind of container for bulk storage of drives?  I'm thinking something similar to these.  (In the side by side screenshot, the ProStorage on the right is WAY too expensive (like 4-6X or so), but I'd be willing to pay a little more than the one on the aquaphoenix website on the left ... unless I could get one or a few for free or close to it locally.

 

     

Bonus points if it's a container that doesn't thermally insulate the drives, so if I wanted to hook up SATA cables and run the drives while they're in it (also be able to secure the vibrating drives to it), it would be fine.   (Or would I need something like this to be able to do that?)

 

 

 

Also I think I want to get rid of a few other things, wondering if I should take them to the charity / recycler as well, or do something else (possibly including keeping some)?  They are

• Rosewill Thor V2 case (bought 2015)
• OCZ StealthXStream 500W PSU (2008)
• 4x 1GB G.Skill DDR2-800 DIMMs (2GB 2008, 2GB 2009)
• Intel Core i3-6100 CPU w/box & cooler (2015; if I don't build an LGA1151 NAS, for example with an MSI C236A Workstation or something. Couldn't use the Thor V2 cause the HDD bays don't support the wide-screw-hole HDDs.)
• 1x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4-2133 SO-DIMM (2015; was in laptop, so was i3-6100; laptop now has i7-6700K and 4x 16GB SO-DIMM.)

 

[porina]

Do you have a local backup strategy? If not, using the older drives to create a server just to hold backups of data might not be a bad idea. If you look at the old HP microservers, they can be very cheap and hold 4 drives. 

[PianoPlayer88Key]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

Do you have a local backup strategy? If not, using the older drives to create a server just to hold backups of data might not be a bad idea. If you look at the old HP microservers, they can be very cheap and hold 4 drives. 

I'm working on creating some kind of strategy to get something started with that.  If you opened the spoiler, I list all the drives I have, including the drives I'm getting rid of, with format coding for different categories of what I'm doing with them.  That includes mentions of some of the larger HDDs I have, with some being used for storage and some for backups.

 

Basically though... for data storage, I have 4x 8TB, 2x 10TB and 2x 14TB drives.  Most of my data is on an 8TB and 10TB HDD, with the rest on several SSDs.
My current plan is to use 2x 8TB, and 1 each 10TB and 14TB for data storage, and the others for backups of the same.  (The data on the SSDs in my laptop would get transferred periodically to one of the "main data storage" drives, then transferred to an equal-size backup drive.)

I wonder if I should keep 1 or 2 of the 4TB or 5TB drives, or maybe order another HDD for backing up my SSDs.  (If I do, I'd prefer a large enough one so that ALL my SSDs would fit on 1 HDD.  I'll skip the math details here but basically that would work out to about 8.85 TB of total SSD capacity for now, with the next size HDD up being 10TB.)

[WereCatf]

25 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Hey all...  So I'm getting rid of about 20 or 25 or so old HDDs of various types and sizes

Too bad you're in the U.S.; I'd definitely like a few of the 3TB+ - drives.

 

Well, since I am not an option, I like the idea of giving them to charity. Doing good for your fellow humans is always a nice thing to do.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

1 minute ago, WereCatf said:

Too bad you're in the U.S.; I'd definitely like a few of the 3TB+ - drives.

 

Well, since I am not an option, I like the idea of giving them to charity. Doing good for your fellow humans is always a nice thing to do.

Yeah.  I'm leaning toward that option, I feel like it's easier to just take them all to one place.

I have a shared folder on Google Drive with several subfolders - including some SMART info on most drives and benchmarks on a few.  (It doesn't include some recently-purchased drives though.)  I also have some screenshots, but they're kinda scattered all over the place (some on Google Photos, some in albums, some may still be on local drives) so if I tried linking them people's brains would fry.  

[porina]

39 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I'm working on creating some kind of strategy to get something started with that.  If you opened the spoiler, I list all the drives I have, including the drives I'm getting rid of, with format coding for different categories of what I'm doing with them.  That includes mentions of some of the larger HDDs I have, with some being used for storage and some for backups

There's a lot of detail there, which is better than not enough, but I don't have the spare mental capacity to go over every detail. If anything, I'd like to keep things simple. For example, I use unraid as you can basically thrown in any random (but working) HD and it adds to a storage pool. Don't over think the capacity, as long as it is enough and has capability to grow with future needs. At up to 4 drives, I'd run one parity and 3 storage, with no easy upgrade path. If you have a bigger case for example, running more HDs is possible, but I might go up to 2 parity drives. Redundancy isn't the most important for backup copies, but a little more resilience to possible failure never hurt, and unraid makes that easy.