Is This Old 320GB Toshiba External Hard Drive Still Worth Using?
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MellowCedar42
I was given a Toshiba HDDR320E04X external hard drive from around 2009. It has 320GB of storage, and I'm considering using it, but I don't currently have a mini-USB cable. Since the drive is quite old, I'd like to know whether it's worth buying a cable for it or if it's too unreliable and slow to bother with.
Answers
Before buying a cable, check the connector on the enclosure. It may use a standard mini-USB data cable, but opening the enclosure could reveal an older internal IDE drive. That might be usable with an older computer or an IDE adapter, although the performance would still be very slow.
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That drive is well beyond the usual reliable lifespan for a hard disk. You can test it and use it for nonessential files, but keep backups elsewhere and expect that it could fail without much warning.
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It may still work, but a drive that old is likely to be slow over USB 2.0 and less reliable than a newer one. If you only need extra space and can’t afford a replacement right now, buying the correct cable could be reasonable—but don’t trust it with your only copy of anything important.
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If the drive contains sentimental or important files, the best use for it would be recovering those files and copying them to newer media. I wouldn’t choose it as the main place to store anything you can’t replace.
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MellowCedar42: I can’t really afford to buy a new hard drive right now, so I was hoping this one might be usable for basic storage.