Member Avatar for RobertHDD

I have a WD Caviar Green 500gb that someone gave me and i was thinking should I put it in my New PC or Put it in the new one im building or should I use it as a BackUp/Storage thing?

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Quick answer up front: treat the drive as “unknown until tested,” then decide. A used WD Caviar Green 500 GB can be a perfectly useful spare, but it’s a consumer, low‑power desktop drive — verify its health first, then pick a role that matches that profile (archive/secondary storage or a portable external, not a 24/7 RAID/NAS job). As noted, pick the option that meets your real need; as warned, drives do fail, so don’t skip the checks.

What to do now (practical steps)

  • Inspect model/serial and run a SMART check plus a long self‑test with manufacturer tools. Western Digital’s Kitfox (successor to Data Lifeguard) shows SMART, firmware and test options. Use that or smartctl / CrystalDiskInfo to read attributes such as Reallocated Sector Count, Current Pending Sector and Offline Uncorrectable — if any of those are growing, retire the disk from critical use. (See Western Digital Kitfox and CrystalDiskInfo docs.)
  • If SMART looks clean, you can use the drive internally as a secondary data disk or put it in a USB 3.0 powered enclosure to use it externally — note 3.5" drives require an external power supply. (See How‑To‑Geek / Windows Central guides.)

Decisions and safety

  • Don’t make it the only copy of anything important. Mechanical drives age and fail; Backblaze data and industry writeups show failures happen and age matters — treat this as spare storage or noncritical archive unless you have redundancy. Follow a multi‑copy backup rule (3‑2‑1) for irreplaceable files.
  • If SMART shows reallocated/pending sectors, use the drive only for throwaway or temporary tasks and replace it for archives. If it’s healthy, initialize/format with Windows Disk Management (NTFS for Windows use) before putting data on it.

Useful links

Short checklist you can follow now: run Kitfox/CrystalDiskInfo or smartctl → run extended self‑test → if OK, put in powered enclosure or install internally and format → keep at least one other copy offsite.

Recommended Answers

All 7 Replies

Member Avatar for JorgeM

You should use it where you need it most. If you dont need it, why install it at all?

Member Avatar for RobertHDD

I think i should use it as a Backup so when my pc does get buggy

Member Avatar for happygeek

Use it as a door-stop, buy another 10,000 and build a HD house, paint it and use as an ornament.

Seriously Robert, if there was an award for pointless question of the year...

[hint] ONLY you know the answer to the question you have asked, as Jorge has pointed out.

Edited by happygeek
Member Avatar for gerbil

Being uncertain as you seem to be, I would open it up, remove the immensely strong magnets from the arm motor, and stick them on the fridge door whilst you choose from the almost unlimited variety of uses to which they can be put.
I cannot think of any at the moment, but something is sure to occur to you one day.

Member Avatar for gerbil

Anyway, from the tenor of your post I'm guessing that you do not have a backup disk drive right now. Not just a partition on your main hdd... that just does not cut it as backup at all. A separate hdd for backups and warehousing of stuff is safer. So use it for that. You could even put your main page file on it as an outer (first) partition to speed your sys a little, with still a small one on your main hdd.
If you don't put a page file on it, but just use it for backups and warehousing then set it in power options to shut down after, say, 10 minutes, because you will likely set your backup software to run just once daily. Less wear and tear on a seldom used drive. With ten minutes, if you are doing incremental backups every 5 or so minutes on some important file as you use it, it will stay on for the duration.

Edited by gerbil
Member Avatar for RobertHDD

lol thats funny happygeek
SERIOUS! why would i want to build a HDD house im not that stupid.
And 2 serious happygeek no offense or anything ive already got a 2TB HDD PC and at least though gerbil not having a go at you but I would only do a BACKUP every 2-3 months i was going to buy another HDD so i could use it as BACKUP Storage but i definitely dont want to whinge to happygeek about this so consider this resolved oh and happygeek ornament hdd houses are for babies.

PS: sorry JorgeM for wasting your time.

commented: I think I have enough old drives to build a small house! :-) +12
Member Avatar for gerbil

" I would only do a BACKUP every 2-3 months"
EEK!!
My sys does one (incremental) every day if it's running. And I re-image my system drive every couple of months, and disconnect and remove the image disk. Why? Because I KNOW it takes at least a full day of hard work to get a new installation set up completely. No thieves, no viruses or kiddies where you live? And disks do die.
Seriously, SyncBack (or similar) is the go. Free, can be scheduled, and will do automatic, periodic, background backups of work if you so wish. Has the power never gone off at your place?
If you've got a good BU software, you rarely need to touch it. Another thing, there are a LOT of posts on forums about file recovery, there are businesses which do little else, and all because people don't do timely backups.

Edited by gerbil
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