I have three unused hard drives: one that appears to be a 5.25-inch drive and two standard 3.5-inch drives. I'm wondering whether I can use them in a new PC instead of buying additional storage. I already purchased an MSI PRO B850-S WIFI6E ATX AM5 motherboard and was considering a Lian Li Vector V100R ATX mid-tower case, but the case doesn't seem to have obvious drive bays. The motherboard appears to have an M.2 slot for a Silicon Power UD90 2TB NVMe SSD, but I'm not sure how or where the older drives would connect and be mounted. The older drives are from around 2011 and 2013. Would this setup work, and is it a good idea?
3 Answers
You can reuse them, but older hard drives are more likely to fail, especially if they have already seen years of use. If they contain anything important, make sure you have backups or some form of redundancy, because one failure could mean losing the data.
The M.2 slot on the motherboard is only for an M.2 SSD, so your older hard drives would not go there. They connect to the motherboard’s SATA ports and also need SATA power from the power supply. The real issue is mounting them: check the case manual for a 3.5-inch drive cage near the bottom or power-supply area. A 5.25-inch drive probably won’t fit in a modern mid-tower unless the case specifically supports that size.
You can use the old drives, but new drives are usually a better choice for important storage. Older models tend to be slower, consume more power per gigabyte, and are closer to failure. Before installing them permanently, test each one with a USB-to-SATA adapter or dock and check its health data. A drive that has been sitting unused for years may not spin up reliably when you need it.
That makes sense. I was used to seeing drive bays along the upper front of older cases, so I assumed this case had no room for them.