I was given a Toshiba HDDR320E04X 320GB hard drive from 2009 by my late uncle, and I'm considering using it for extra storage. I don't currently have the right mini-USB cable and want to know whether it's worth buying one, or whether the drive is simply too old and unreliable to bother with. My budget is tight, so replacing it with a newer drive isn't really an option right now.
3 Answers
Depending on the enclosure, you might be able to remove the drive and connect it directly with an older IDE-compatible computer or adapter instead of buying a USB cable. That setup would still be slow, and you should check the exact connector before taking anything apart.
The safest use would be recovering sentimental or important files from it and copying them to another device. Don’t rely on it as the only place those files exist, since an old hard drive can fail without warning.
It may still work, but a drive this old is well beyond the age where I’d trust it with anything important. It’ll also be limited by USB 2.0 speeds, so transfers will be pretty slow. If you use it, keep backups of anything you care about and treat it as temporary or nonessential storage.
I can’t really afford a new hard drive at the moment, so I’m hoping this one can at least be useful for less important files.