Old hard drives

I have 2 old hard drives from old computers, i would like to use them as a external hard drive for backing up pic's and videos etc, the hard drives are old and not in the computer any more but still have info and softwere on them but i would like to know how to clean the info off and software i done't have any cd's for software etc, if i was to leave the info on there can i still use the hard drive with out any problems, 1 hard drive will have windows 95 on there and 1 windows xp no cd's

 

Hi,

Well simple answer - do not waste your time and money - just buy a brand new USB External drive similar to one these, available from many places, Seagate and Western Digital are both good makes. All usb2 and usb3 compatible
Have used this place for many years, excellent service.
Seagate 1TB Basic USB3.0 External HDD - STJL100400

Why not to use your old drives , many reasons.

As they are from such old computers, their size MB /GB will be small by todays standards.

They also run on quiet heavy power and you will need to buy an 'extenal HDD caddy' that has an external power supply, being at least half the cost of a modern drive as above.
They are a pain to use with all their extra wires and plugs etc vs the above with just a single usb lead. ( speaking from experience !)

Sounds like those drives are ten or more years old , so the hardware is near the end of its life , and not the best medium to store your data on for the future.

You can buy just one external USB drive, but we find its better to have two, one to hold in the house and another somewhere else, so if one drive fails/corrupts you have a backup.

As well as using external drives for your photos etc you might find taking System Images of your drive C very handy in case you had some major problem or were hacked etc.
This free program does it all for you, again used it for years ok.
Macrium Reflect Free

hth

 

Always keep one USB drive out of the house, eg down in a shed or unattached garage, so if anything dramatic happened in the house, still have a backup.

Could always leave it at another house, but encrypted, so no chance anyone could read it.

If modern, you could backup to the Cloud, but again in encrypted form.

What a lot of folk forget, with all the online banking and shopping, what about your web links and passwords / pw managers etc, if they were lost ?
A simple but well encrypted file, hidden away in the backups is essential these days.
Seems its often a problem, usually for the widows, who have no idea what passwords the other half used when they have to start dealing with all the financial matters.

 

Thank you Ricky, FC and JWK
I'll have a look at some exteral hard drives

What's the easyist and quickist way to back up, i don't want to download any software just jet but is there a way of backing up with just the using of the computer, i've copy and paste and drap and drop things to usb sticks, using windows 10

How do you encrypted things?

 

Well a bit surprised at GCHQ using Chinese backup software like Aomei !
Donald would not be happy ... !

For a change Macrium Reflect is actually a UK based company !

@Jiffy Encryption can be a little daunting and you do need to use extra free software, unless you already have that feature in some of your software.
eg BitLocker is only in Windows 10 Pro version and above, not the more common W10 Home edition.

Have a look at this link which gives you some idea of how it works.
https://www.howtogeek.com/170352/how-to-password-protect-files-and-folders-with-encryption/

 

Thank you all once again, i will have to read up (slowly as brain hate big computer words )
Sounds like the way to go is Western Digital drive

as i have a desk top and laptop can the WD drive be used on the 2 machines but most of the pic's and video's will be the same but different Documents

 

Not going for any cloud back up, when i bought this new deck top we had MS office and it came we xxx stoage on the cloud i switch it off asp

 

Hi,

Just better add to @Fat Controllers comment about "just unplugging" the usb drive.

Do so, but only after you use the "Eject USB device" and get the "USB Safe to Disconnect" system message or you could loose some data.