Which <2TB HDDs to retire? (buy a new 1 or 2TB HDD, or, can MBR-installed OS be made to boot from clone on GPT drive?)

[PianoPlayer88Key]

 

Which older / <= 2TB HDDs should I keep, if any? (SMART in spoilers - some have issues; other info also included)

Should I consider purchasing a newer 1 or 2TB HDD for MBR-installed OS backups (if all the existing drives should be retired)? (Or how would you make it so you can boot, from a GPT drive, an OS clone that was originally installed on an MBR drive?)

Also in progress of organizing things, then intend to make a backup.

(Might consider NAS, but with caveats; also that'd be for another post in more detail sometime.)

 

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I've been going through my older/smaller hard drives yesterday/today, to see which ones I can retire (or see if I should hang onto a couple for a while longer for some use cases).  They range from an 80GB WD IDE from 2001 to a 2TB Samsung/Seagate SATA from 2015.

• 80GB WD800JB (per SMART; although label on disk says WD800BB) 3.5" IDE 2001
• 250GB WD2500JB 3.5" IDE 2001
• 750GB WD7500AAKS 3.5" SATA 2007
• 750GB WD7501AALS 3.5" SATA 2009
• 1TB WD10EADS 3.5" SATA 2009
• 2x 1.5TB WD15EADS 3.5" SATA 2009
• 2TB WD20EADS 3.5" SATA 2012
• 2TB WD20EZRX 3.5" SATA 2014
• 2TB ST2000LM003 2.5" SATA 2015

 

I got screenshots of the SMART data on the drives, and have posted it here in a spoiler.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm thinking I might like to keep a couple <= 2TB drives around.  One use would be for booting OS's cloned from MBR-formatted drives for testing / restoring/backup purposes.  (I tried booting from a clone on a GPT drive that'd originally been installed on an MBR drive, and wasn't able to get that to work.)

 

As of now, I'm likely to at least retire:

• WD800BB (its age, also has a reallocated sector.  Several months ago when I plugged it in, it was doing the click of death, but then another time I tried with another cable or mounted differently and it's working now.  Also it hasn't death-clicked recently even through several reboots and cable swaps.  The PCIe to IDE/SATA RAID card being used however DOES force me to fully power off the system before rebooting, otherwise neither IDE drive is detected after a warm reboot.) ...
  • However, part of me wants to still keep it for nostalgic purposes - I think it was the first hard drive I personally ever bought.  (Also sometime, if I ever get my hands on an NVMe SSD, I'd like to devise a Windows usage (non-gaming) performance benchmark when a system is low on RAM & needing pagefile - comparing an IDE HDD, 5400rpm SATA HDD, 7200rpm SATA HDD, SATA SSD & NVMe SSD, or something like that, vs. having enough RAM.)
• WD2500JB (age, some UDMA CRC errors)
• WD7500AAKS (UDMA CRC errors, long power-on time)
• WD7501AALS (pending sector, UDMA CRC errors)
• WD15EADS #WMAVU0170855 (long power-on time for a Green)
• WD15EADS #WMAVU0188395 (read & high write error rates)
• WD20EADS (maybe - 1 write error)
• ST2000LM003 (38 pending sectors, failed SMART test with read error at 10% multiple times, read & write error rates)

 

That leaves WD10EADS and WD20EZRX as ones to possibly still hang onto for a while longer.

 

As of now, I have OS install clones on WD10EADS, WD7501AALS, WD7500AAKS.

Also, ST2000LM003 still has the data that was on it when I started having problems with it.  (I did copy almost all of it onto one of my 4+ TB HGST 3.5" drives, although right now I can't remember which one.  There were a few files that wouldn't copy due to drive errors.)

 

Are there any that I maybe should keep, and if so, which ones?

 

Or, should I retire them all, and maybe pick up a newer <=2TB drive instead? (Would like a recent model with a warranty, not old-stock / older models that have been out of production for a while.) If so, a few I might have in mind include:

• 2TB:
  • WD20EZRZ (WD Blue 3.5")
  • ST2000VN004 (Seagate IronWolf 3.5")
• 1TB:
  • ST1000DM010 (Seagate Barracuda 3.5")
  • ST1000LM048 (Seagate Barracuda 2.5"
  • 0J22413 (HGST Travelstar 2.5")
  • ST1000VN002 (Seagate Ironwolf 3.5")
  • 0S03563 (HGST Travelstar 5K1000 2.5")
  • WD10EFRX (WD Red 3.5")
  • WD10JFCX (WD Red 2.5")
• 750GB: WD7500BPKX (WD Black 2.5")
• 500GB: ST500LM030 (Seagate Barracuda 2.5")

 

 

Or should I consider something else entirely?  Or just scrap all my 2TB & smaller / MBR-formatted hard drives?  (If so, then what would be a way to make a clone from a Windows OS installed on an MBR drive, boot from a GPT drive?)

 

Other drives not previously mentioned that I'll be keeping for a good while include:

• Crucial SSDs:
  • M.2 250GB MX200 SATA (boot drive for my laptop)
  • 2.5" 256GB M550 SATA (boot drive for my desktop)
  • 2x 2.5" 1050GB MX300 SATA (storage for laptop)
• HGST Deskstar NAS 3.5" HDDs:
  • 3x 4TB (some storage, some backup)
  • 3x 5TB (some storage, some backup)
  • 3x 8TB (intended for backup)
  • 2x 10TB (1 storage, 1 backup)

 

I'm also involved in a fairly sizeable project, of consolidating data that's scattered across a bunch of the drives.  (There's quite a lot of unorganized duplication, and a lot of files recorded from portable audio recorders, photo & video cameras, etc. that still have the default filenames, over the last several years or more.)  I'm hoping to get everything consolidated onto whatever HGST drives it'll fit on, then make a backup copy of everything onto the remaining HGST drives.

 

 

Another option I've also considered, for the backup, is building a NAS box.  I should save more details for its own post sometime, but just to mention a few things:  I've considered FreeNAS (I like the idea of ZFS, but its high RAM requirements and inability to add drives one-at-a-time are a deal-breaker for me) and UnRAID (does it have ZFS-like protections without its requirements?).  Was looking at LGA2011 / LGA1366 / LGA771 dual-socket systems for a while, but for now not considering them.  I have an i3-6100 not currently installed (it was in my laptop before I upgraded to an i7-6700K), so LGA1151 may be an option.  However, I'd prefer the entire NAS build (not including drives) be under $200-300 or so, and support at least 6-8 or more > 2TB 3.5" drives, with room for expansion.  Also another thing I had considered for FreeNAS / ZFS was deduplication.  However, I'm not so sure it'll accomplish the purpose I want of finding my duplicates of files & deleting the extra copies.  I get the feeling it'll have only 1 copy, but have a record of multiple places it's stored - so that if I was to do a full restore to "normal" (i.e. non-ZFS) operation, I"d be right back to having the extra duplicates laying around.

 

(In case you missed it after reading this far, there's a TL;DR at the top of the post.  However, of course, details are left out of that, that are in the main body of the post, which may influence answers/advice given.)