Hard Disk: to use or not to use?

I have an abundance of Hard disk drives. I was wondering what is the best possible use they can be put to. My PC at the moment has two Hard Drives; 1. 300GB Maxtor, this was the original one 2. 120GB Western Digital, this came from a previous computer and I installed it as a slave. Used as a temp store before back up to external drive. That was the idea but rarely done. I also have some external Hard Drives, all connected via USB; 3. 80Gb Western Digital, from a PVR unit placed in an enclosure. Formatted and ready for use. 4. 2TB Western Digital Elements, less than a year old. Mainly used to store photos. 5. 1TB Maxtor, in another enclosure. All these drives are working but there is no system or organisation, I keep pluging them in and out.. What should I do? One possible problem is Drive 5 the 1TB Maxtor. This drive lost most of the data that I had stored. The problem may have been the virus I had (cleared up thanks to WhattheTech volunteer). Should I use this drive or bin it? It has been formatted an appears normal. any Suggestions, ideas, Thanks in advance, Beejay1701

what is the best possible use they can be put to

Probably for keeping loose papers from flying around.

If any of these drives are EIDE (PATA, IDE, ATA, UltraATA), as I suspect the small drives are, they are probably too slow and too small to be of much use. And more and more motherboards are reducing, or eliminating support for EIDE drives.

Your larger Tb drives can be used for network storage or backups.

In any case, for any drive you are considering getting rid of, I recommend you use a "wipe" utility on them such as Eraser, or use the Wipe feature in CCleaner to ensure there is no personal data remaining. Alternatively, and what I do with older drives, drill 3 holes through the platters.

I was thinking of backing up my photos and other important data to the smaller drives. Then I might treat myself to a new computer.

Well, understand those smaller drives are also probably older drives. And if they support the older EIDE interface, you may have problems retrieving those old files in the future.

I hadn't considered future compatability. Does that mean all my 5.25" floppys are also usless Nothing is ever simple. I think I might just use the old computer as either a Gateway Firewall or a Linux PC Thanks for the advice.

Does that mean all my 5.25" floppys are also usless

About as useless as my 8" floppies and the 100Kb of data stored (or was stored) on them.

I think I might just use the old computer as either a Gateway Firewall or a Linux PC

Either are good options. If you have not played with Linux, then that would be a great learning experience with little risk. Of course you can always setup a gateway firewall for your network using a Linux box!

If you still have a computer that can support those drives, then you can also use them for network storage, or for serving (streaming) tunes or videos through your network. I just would not rely on these drives as my only backup.