I'm in the process of building a new PC and I'm considering reusing some older drives to save money. I've had these drives for about 8 years now, and I plan to get a new M.2 drive for the operating system since they're faster than regular SSDs. I'm wondering at what point I should consider getting rid of my old drives and how I can check their health and wear and tear before making that decision.
5 Answers
Just a heads up—my hard drive failed after about 5 years. You might want to keep a close eye on the condition of your old drives to avoid any surprises.
The SSDs you're talking about are different from traditional hard drives. For SSDs, check if your brand offers software that monitors their health, like Samsung's Magician. It's useful for keeping track.
Hard drives typically show some SMART errors as they age. Once you notice a pattern of errors, you might want to stop using that drive. For SSDs, tools like CrystalDiskInfo can help you monitor their health—some of mine are still at 85% after years!
I recommend using a backup system, especially if you've never done it before. Considering you have four drives, keeping one as a backup could be a smart move!
You can keep using them until they fail, but it's important to remember that any drive could die unexpectedly. So, definitely make sure to back up your data regularly to avoid losing anything important.
Gotcha! In my new build, I plan to include both HDDs and SSDs, and this will be my first time using an M.2 drive.