I have several unused hard drives—one measuring roughly 5.75×4 inches and two around 4×3 inches—and I'd like to use them in a new PC instead of buying additional storage. I'm considering a Lian Li Vector V100R ATX mid-tower case and already purchased an MSI PRO B850-S WIFI6E ATX AM5 motherboard. The motherboard has an M.2 slot for a Silicon Power UD90 2TB NVMe SSD, but I'm not sure whether my older drives will connect or fit in the case. I haven't purchased the case yet. The older drives are from around 2011 and 2013. Can they still be used, and what should I check before relying on them?
3 Answers
Older mechanical drives may also use noticeably more power per unit of storage than a modern SSD, though the biggest concern is reliability rather than compatibility. They’re fine for temporary storage, downloads, or replaceable files, but buying a newer drive is safer if you need dependable long-term storage.
You can reuse them, but drives from 2011–2013 are getting old enough that I wouldn’t trust them with anything important. Test each one before installing it, check its SMART health data, and keep a separate backup. A drive that has been sitting unused for years may also fail to spin up when powered on again.
The M.2 slot is only for the thin NVMe drive, so your older hard drives won’t go there. They should connect to the motherboard’s SATA ports and also need SATA power from the power supply. The main issue is mounting them: check the case manual for its drive cages. This case can accommodate one 3.5-inch drive and one 2.5-inch drive, but a much larger 5.25-inch-style drive won’t fit in a normal modern hard-drive mount.
That makes sense. I’ll test them first instead of assuming they’re still reliable.