HOW TO CONVERT YOUR OLD HARD DISK INTO AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

So your laptop’s hard drive is full and you need to get an external HDD as soon as possible but unfortunately you don’t have enough cash to get one, but then you have an old pc that’s probably not working well stashed somewhere with its hard disk still intact. Do you know you can use the old hard disk as an external drive? I bet you didn’t. Most people don’t know this and they probably have old pcs in their homes and maybe their offices too. Making use of the old hard drive saves you the cash you would have spent in getting an external hard disk. So now I’m going to show you how you can easily convert your old hard disk into an external drive for backing up and storing your files.






Many persons do not know what an external Hard disk is until their current hard disk is full. So before we begin lets know what an external hard disk is.

What is an external hard drive?

An external hard drive is a storage device used to store and back up files on a computer via a USB cable or wirelessly. External hard drives have high storage capacities like the normal hard drives found in computers.
Before we begin we need an external hard drive casing. You can get this easily online. They come in different colours and shapes. When purchasing an external hard drive casing, make sure you get one that is padded. This will protect the disk whenever it accidently falls.



I just got an external case online and this one is quite the common type so I’m going to use it to illustrate how to use an old HDD as an external hard drive and also the hard disk I would be using is a SATA hard disk pulled from an old dell pc. If the old pc you have is quite very old, the hard drive inside may not be a SATA type but IDE. This means you need to get an IDE hard disk case. The image below show the difference between the two types of drives which is their connection points..

So now let's begin

Step 1

Locate and remove the hard drive form the old pc.

Step 2

Open the case and carefully slot the hard drive into it.

Step 3

Now close the case and plug its USB cable to your Pc, it should show a blue light to indicate that its connected after which the light starts going on and off repeatedly to show that the drive is working and functioning properly.






That’s it. Easy and simple. Mounting an IDE disk in its casing is quite easy and simple too.
Make sure your new external hard drive does not fall, this could spoil the disk and you could lose all your files. So always keep it in a safe place.



All images here are my original works shot with my Nikon D5100 DSLR camera.
This is my first post about computer related stuff and I hope it was helpful. My photography stuff takes up most of my hard drive space, what takes up yours? let’s talk in the comments.