What do so with unused 2.5" SSD Drives & M.2 SSDs

[Lawrencewendall]

Dead platter harddrives make neat windchimes to give away. The platters are aluminum which reflect the sun and sound nice.

 

[GenXguy]

I have had two Crucial SSDs fail in the last 2 years - 128 GB and 256 GB. Strange was that one showed signs in advance that it was failing, and the other one had been working fine when taken out of service, but when hooked up now, it's never seen where other drives are working.

I just bought a new 512 GB Lexar SSD for my main desktop - more than double what I needed for my system/applications drive. I have 8 TB and 4 TB standard hard drives as a secondary for data drives in my desktop and home theater PCs. Laptops don't get much use and have found 240GB or 256GB to be more than enough. I have scripted scheduled backups of my data.

The OPs drives all sound like keeping around or selling/donating rather than tossing out. They don't take much space.

 

[OldShooter]

I would shop eBay for a used Synology NAS, put in the two 1tb drives as RAID 1/mirrored and have an incredibly capable and easy to use box for not much money. By mirroring the drives you are very resistant to one of them failing.

Smaller Synology boxes are marked DSxyy where x is the number of disk positions and yy is the model year. So DS214 is a two-drive box, model year 2014. There is also sometimes a suffix. "J" is the slowest, no suffix is next, and "+" is the fastest. You probably don't care about the speed. Some are hot swap, which you probably don’t care about either. Example decent buy: https://www.ebay.com/itm/185895943732?hash=item2b4842fe34:g

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I would shop eBay for a used Synology NAS, put in the two 1tb drives as RAID 1/mirrored and have an incredibly capable and easy to use box for not much money. By mirroring the drives you are very resistant to one of them failing.

As mentioned earlier, we already have a 16tb Synology NAS.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I think I have been persuaded to put them on eBay and just ask less than that they are selling for.

 

[OldShooter]

As mentioned earlier, we already have a 16tb Synology NAS.

Sorry, missed that. I have two Synology boxes; one for NAS use with Synology cloud, etc, and a second older one that I just point DWs and my backup programs to. That keeps things a little neater, but only justified because I ended up with enough bits to build it for little cost.

 

[ls99]

Some years ago posted my method for secure erase.

 

[target2019]

I spend way too much on SSDs it scares me. We have 3 laptops, 2 of them have 2 x m.2 slots and 2 x 2.5" slots and the other is my ultralight one for travel that has 1 x m.2.

I recently upgraded them all to the new Samsung 990 4tb M.2 single sided SSDs. I got them all at the sale price of $249. 5 in total. They are on backorder now and not on sale anymore, so I got them just in time. Hense the current clear out.

SSD is the new USB. Glad to hear you're spending.

 

[ncbill]

I reformatted all of my 2.5" external HDDs (all small capacity, nowhere near 1TB) and gave to a friend to sell at their yard sale.

 

[Car-Guy]

I reformatted all of my 2.5" external HDDs (all small capacity, nowhere near 1TB) and gave to a friend to sell at their yard sale.

I suspect you know this, especially after some of the comments/posts in this thread, while formatting is helpful, old/existing data is not actually erased by simple formatting. Old/existing data is still recoverable with special software tools and techniques. Of course if you don't have any sensitive/personal data on the disk, that you don't care if some gets their hands on, then formatting is probably good enough. e.g like having your password file on an Excel spreadsheet.

There are many, many, many, programs that will permanently erase all the data on a harddisk. Many are free. Personally I like/use DBAN (a.k.a. Darik's Boot and Nuke) Depending on the speed of your computer, size of your HD, and eraser method selected, it can take many, many hours to fully/permanently erase all data. One time, just for grins, I selected the most stringent method for data erasure on a relatively small HD... It took well over a full day for the program to do it's thing.

 

[old medic]

I have a laptop that needs a new HD. One of these days......

 

[nphx]

on ebay search "sata usb adapter" when you need to use the old drive like as if it was a USB stick. Also that will let you either use it or run a sanitizer: https://www.killdisk.com/eraser.html (like Hilary used) to wipe the drive. From ebay if u can wait for china shipping the usb adapter is under $5.00

 

[easysurfer]

I would definitely keep them. In fact, I just bought some 2.5 and 3.5 size HDDs off ebay.

Can be reused in many ways. Especially if you pick up something like one of those USB to SATA adapters.

- test drives
- data backup
- system backup
- external data
- distro hopping (if you do linux)

 

[rk911]

I have upgraded all my laptops to well over 1tb. As a result, I have a few SSD drives sitting on the shelf.

Should I keep them, donate them or put them on eBay or FB marketplace? Honestly, I do not think they are worth much. I think looking up what they are selling for on eBay and trying to sell them there is my best bet.

I have the following: All drives are healthy and working with no issues.

2 x 1tb 2.5" SSD drives
1 x 256gb 2.5" SSD Drive
1 x 512 M.2 SSD drive (M.2 Pcie stick)
1 x Samsung T5 2tb External SSD
1 x Samsung T3 1tb SSD.

For the techies here, what would you do with them?

I'd keep the 2TB and use it as a 'disaster backup'. Clone it to your primary drive X-times per year and keep it in a bank vault safety dep. box or home safe. You can never have too many backups. Otherwise, wipe them clean using appropriate software and/or drill through the drives destoying the disc and take them to the appropriate recycle center.

I harvested 6-8 old hard drives from my late BIL's residence. I wiped and then tried to sell them. Took months to even get a query. I sold them for literal pennies on the dollar. Not worth the effort, IMO.

 

[Sunset]

I reformatted all of my 2.5" external HDDs (all small capacity, nowhere near 1TB) and gave to a friend to sell at their yard sale.

I used to buy computers and parts at garage sales... it was amazing all the information people gave me for $10 .

Next time: wipe them and then format them.

 

[ncbill]

I used to buy computers and parts at garage sales... it was amazing all the information people gave me for $10 .

Next time: wipe them and then format them.

Sorry, I should have been more specific.

I chose "write zeros" so it would not take as long as a multi-pass, random overwrite.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I chose "write zeros" so it would not take as long as a multi-pass, random overwrite.

Diskpart (Windows App) whites Zeros with the "Clean All" command.

 

[easysurfer]

Sorry, I should have been more specific.

I chose "write zeros" so it would not take as long as a multi-pass, random overwrite.

While we are on the topic, couldn't we just use something like system install disc (or other media) to do a faster initialize? I think that's even faster than "write zeros."

I keep an old Windows XP install disc around for that purpose as it's been able to reformat disks where other software see the disks as unreadable.

 

[nphx]

... (or other media) to do a faster initialize? I think that's even faster than "write zeros."

I have used bad disk recovery tools that look for file handles and data on the drive , if the sector was not overwritten intentionally the repair utility can locate it and recover it. So an install may not necessarily write on every area of the disk to wipe it.

 

[easysurfer]

... (or other media) to do a faster initialize? I think that's even faster than "write zeros."

I have used bad disk recovery tools that look for file handles and data on the drive , if the sector was not overwritten intentionally the repair utility can locate it and recover it. So an install may not necessarily write on every area of the disk to wipe it.

Interesting.

 

[skyking1]

this is absolutely true. Long story short, I lost my aunt's book that she was working on for the family history. One of the drives I was working on it with, I formatted and sold to an online community member. He installed on it, then got my panicked message.
He used a recovery tool and it got back most of the book in chunks and pieces.

 

[easysurfer]

Looks like I may have to keep my "write zeros" software after all .

 

[CRLLS]

... (or other media) to do a faster initialize? I think that's even faster than "write zeros."

I have used bad disk recovery tools that look for file handles and data on the drive , if the sector was not overwritten intentionally the repair utility can locate it and recover it. So an install may not necessarily write on every area of the disk to wipe it.

Is that better/quicker than a complete drive format? Not a quick format. I know that quick format basically deletes the index as to where to find the files, not the file data itself.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I have Learned one can have too many backups also. That is why I am going to sell all these.

Here is what I will have once they all have gone:

1) Synology NAS with 2 x 8TB disks set up a JBOD and Auto Synchronized, each is a copy of the other.
2) Media Player 1 with a 4TB Hard Drive Synchronized with the NAS
3) Media Player 2 with a 4TB Hard Drive - (Thinking of selling this one as it is just a backup of Media Player 1.
4) 3 Laptops all with Wodges of SSDs, each stored their own Image Backup files on dedicated backup partitions and synchronized with the NAS.

Media Player have all our Pictures, Software install packages, DVD Rips, Music CD Rips, TV Series Rips and Movie Rips. All of which synchronize to the NAS disks.

So, you see, we are well protected and do not need anything else.

 

[RetMD21]

Various "experts" say that formatting with windows will remove all data if you unclick the "quick" option. It seems too easy