smithson83 Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 I have some old WD Passport 500GB USB HDD's laying around (x10) that use to be used taking backups offsite. I was wondering if anyone here had any cool (or to a lesser extent, useful) ideas of what I can use them for. (Other than giving out to staff to shove in a draw because they wanted something for free but will never use it) Unfortunately, the HDD's them selves cannot be removed and repurposed and they have USB Connections straight onto the drive, and all but a few of them are USB2.0. So... Any Ideas guys?
tmcd35 Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 10 port USB hub, Windows 2012, Storage Spaces. Could use it for Volume Shadow Copy, ISO repository, Driver repository, etc. Although that's little around 4Tb space formatted so could keep you going for a fair while. 1
hardtailstar Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 media storage? We have a external HDD that is just an area for all media to go so that it doesn't go over our back up limit. 1
jamesb Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 Can they be made bootable? I have a selection of USB sticks, SD cards and USB drives sitting around with various specialist OSs present on them for all sorts of purposes, including SteamOS, Kali, Scientific Linux and LinuxConsole. 1
smithson83 Posted October 16, 2014 Author Posted October 16, 2014 All great ideas guys, Cheers... The storage spaces idea sounds good @tmcd35 ,might try that one, like @hardtailstar said, to dump media/photos etc on. 1
cpjitservices Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 You could put them in a server or PC and RAID them to make one big storage area or just as mirrored disks to transfer old Backups or images too etc.
smithson83 Posted October 16, 2014 Author Posted October 16, 2014 Not sure I could raid them cpjitservices @cpjitservices , would need a USB-Raid Card. That was my initial thought when I replaced them ages ago, shove em in a box and use it as a backup target, but alas they all had USB connections to the drive, must of done it to get them as small they are.
tmcd35 Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 (edited) Storage Spaces will software RAID them. Add them to a pool and create a parity drive across them. If you are running 2012R2, with that many drives, I'll look at dual redundancy so 2 drives can fail without loss of data. Edited October 16, 2014 by tmcd35
cpjitservices Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 Nah no converter necessary just take them out of the caddies.
plexer Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 I have some old WD Passport 500GB USB HDD's laying around (x10) that use to be used taking backups offsite. I was wondering if anyone here had any cool (or to a lesser extent, useful) ideas of what I can use them for. (Other than giving out to staff to shove in a draw because they wanted something for free but will never use it) Unfortunately, the HDD's them selves cannot be removed and repurposed and they have USB Connections straight onto the drive, and all but a few of them are USB2.0. So... Any Ideas guys? Are you sure there's definitely no sata connector and that what you're seeing isn't just an adapter screwed to the drive? Ben
cpjitservices Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 Actually are the Western Digitals as they have there own bespoke connector in internal drives
Arthur Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 Are you sure there's definitely no sata connector and that what you're seeing isn't just an adapter screwed to the drive? Western Digital's portable HDDs have had native USB connectors for quite a while now.
plexer Posted October 16, 2014 Posted October 16, 2014 How to connect and recover USB-only western digital drives with HD Doctor suite|Data Recovery Salon: No.1 Data Recovery Magazine Crack on. Ben
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