Usage for spare SSD?

[19_blackie_73]

Hey guys,

after getting a new laptop, the SSD from my old laptop is now without usage as the new one already came with one. Story why I don't have the rest of the laptop anymore - I sold it with the original HDD it came with. Now I would like to here some thoughts what I can do with it. It's a 250GB 850EVO, so not the cheapest drive, but my PC already has a big SSD (Crucial MX300 525GB) and my new laptop as a 256GB X400 SSD in it, and TBH, I didn't notice any difference because of the drive, so I don't see any point in swapping them out. Putting it into my PC would be an option, though I don't see any real sense in that because my SSD and HDD in it are only filled half max, so plenty of room left. Selling it is kinda dumb isn't it because you can't erase it unrestorable? And I don't have a use case for a very fast external drive either tbh.

 

Any ideas are highly appreciated!

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 minute ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

Hey guys,

after getting a new laptop, the SSD from my old laptop is now without usage as the new one already came with one. Story why I don't have the rest of the laptop anymore - I sold it with the original HDD it came with. Now I would like to here some thoughts what I can do with it. It's a 250GB 850EVO, so not the cheapest drive, but my PC already has a big SSD (Crucial MX300 525GB) and my new laptop as a 256GB X400 SSD in it, and TBH, I didn't notice any difference because of the drive, so I don't see any point in swapping them out. Putting it into my PC would be an option, though I don't see any real sense in that because my SSD and HDD in it are only filled half max, so plenty of room left. Selling it is kinda dumb isn't it because you can't erase it unrestorable? And I don't have a use case for a very fast external drive either tbh.

 

Any ideas are highly appreciated!

Dedicated drive for Linux maybe if you're into that? Maybe even a drive to play around with Hackint.... you know what.

[Mooshi]

My old 120GB SSD from 2011 which cost 250usd at the time just sits there.

[VolkA]

8 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

Hey guys,

after getting a new laptop, the SSD from my old laptop is now without usage as the new one already came with one. Story why I don't have the rest of the laptop anymore - I sold it with the original HDD it came with. Now I would like to here some thoughts what I can do with it. It's a 250GB 850EVO, so not the cheapest drive, but my PC already has a big SSD (Crucial MX300 525GB) and my new laptop as a 256GB X400 SSD in it, and TBH, I didn't notice any difference because of the drive, so I don't see any point in swapping them out. Putting it into my PC would be an option, though I don't see any real sense in that because my SSD and HDD in it are only filled half max, so plenty of room left. Selling it is kinda dumb isn't it because you can't erase it unrestorable? And I don't have a use case for a very fast external drive either tbh.

 

Any ideas are highly appreciated!

So far I could only think of 3 things.

 

1. Buy those external casing for SSD to USB 3 and use it as a fast external / backup drive.

2. Use it as a paper weight.

3. Sell it.

[RadiatingLight]

cache for games/programs (or writes to a HDD)?

cash by selling it?

raid 0 with your current SSD? (if possible)

 

[19_blackie_73]

6 minutes ago, Mooshi said:

My old 120GB SSD from 2011 which cost 250usd at the time just sits there.

well I don't see a point in letting hardware sitting around

8 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Dedicated drive for Linux maybe if you're into that? Maybe even a drive to play around with Hackint.... you know what.

hm... I had a linux vm sometime ago but didn't know what to do with it after exploring it a bit.... I installed ubuntu which felt like a knock off of mac os

1 minute ago, VolkA said:

So far I could only think of 3 things.

 

1. Buy those external casing for SSD to USB 3 and use it as a fast external / backup drive.

2. Use it as a paper weight.

3. Sell it.

to 1.) would be the last option before selling it

to 2.) it's a bit light

to 3.) what about unrestorable erase though? can it be done?

 

2 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

cache for games/programs (or writes to a HDD)?

cash by selling it?

raid 0 with your current SSD? (if possible)

 

already have all my programms on the other ssd, selling see point 3 above. Raid 0 is only with same sized drives isn't it? Does it affect lifespan?

[RadiatingLight]

1 minute ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

Raid 0 is only with same sized drives isn't it? Does it affect lifespan?

depends on your RAID solution, but RAID 0 works with different sized drives AFAIK. you could also split your 500GB into two partitions of 250, and then RAID 0 all three if your RAID solution doesn't support different sized drives (but that's kinda janky)

 

doesn't affect lifespan any more than normal use would.

[Mooshi]

Yeah, it kinda bugs me I have the SSD laying around haha. It's too small to use as a games drive and I have plans to upgrade my storage for higher capacity, not litter with many small drives.

 

A project build with Linux might give it a new life, though... maybe!

[VolkA]

9 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

to 3.) what about unrestorable erase though? can it be done?

I think you can do some thing like secure format or something like that. Not really sure thou.

[Gamingfreek]

Spread some peanut butter on it and have it for a snack

[SkilledRebuilds]

If you can use it on another machine, then use it as a cache drive (eG Fancycache or similar app) to boost Mech-HDD's reads and writes.

If you want to use it on your main system still, encase it and use it as an external 256GB USB 3 FAST External USB Enclosure.

 

Gift it to someone you know with an old Pc (IDE->Sata adapters) or Native Sata1-3 ports. and Give them the 'file access time' benefits over their old Mech drives.