Technology is evolving day by day. A piece that was newer just yesterday is today replaced by an enhanced version of the same. As a result, most of us tend to upgrade our devices more frequently than ever. And when it happens, the old solid state drive just stays in the drawer forever.
My concern is not to be so quick in setting something aside. With a little creativity or some practical knowledge, you can give them a new life in many useful ways. Repurposing your SSD not only helps you in making the most of your technical knowledge but also helps reduce the electronic waste, which is a win either way.
If you have an old SSD or multiple of them lying around, there are several ways you can repurpose them. Because SSDs are fast storage drives, you can utilize them in different ways. The traditional methods are to use them as external storage devices or in NAS drives. We will discuss them as well, but in many other interesting ways. Let’s get started.
Even the aging ones seem faster when compared to a brand-new HDD. Repurposing them can do two things: one, give them a new life, and second, give you extra storage space and some new technology.
With this idea, let’s jump right away to 6 useful ways to repurpose your SSD.
1. Turn It Into a Portable External Drive
With the help of SATA or NVMe SSD enclosures, we can easily use our old SSDs as external drives. There are some features you’ll miss compared to the actual external SSDs, but you’ll still be able to save a lot of money by going for the SSD enclosure. For SATA SSDs, there are SATA-to-USB adapters as well, which are much cheaper than the enclosures. For NVMe SSDs, here is a detailed guide for you.
To get started, all you need is an SSD enclosure – more specifically, one that supports SATA to USB. You can find these enclosures online as well as offline. These come in different designs, often ranging under $20.
How to Install?
To install it,
- Remove any necessary data
- Open the SSD enclosure
- Carefully fix the SSD inside the SATA connector as per the instructions provided
- Close the enclosure and connect it to the computer via USB
Most operating systems will instantly recognize the drive, though you may need to format it for the first time.
You can use this external SSD for backups, transferring data, or carrying an external operating system.
2. Repurpose It for a Scratch Disk or Cache Drive
This idea of repurposing is for media editors. They need speed, especially when working with large files and high-resolution videos. Utilizing the old SSD as a dedicated scratch disk can significantly improve the performance of editing software such as Premiere Pro or Adobe Photoshop.
You can assign the SSD in particular to handle the cache files, temporary data, and previews. The setup can help increase the rendering and streamline your workflow.
3. Use It for Lightweight Devices or Projects
An old SSD is a powerful tool for giving life to outdated hardware. Think about swapping the old, creaking hard drive in your old laptop with an SSD. It will dramatically improve the boot time, application loading time, and make your laptop feel snappy again.
Beyond old laptops, SSDs can also power a Raspberry Pi device via a USB adapter, as they offer a fast and reliable storage solution even when they’re old.
4. Use It as a Bootable Drive for OS Installation
If you are a true computer enthusiast, you might have done an operating system installation by yourself. No other way of repurposing an old SSD is as good as this one. The idea is to convert the SSD into a bootable drive for operating systems such as Linux or Windows. It is a nice tweakable idea for those who are regularly involved in troubleshooting systems, or experimenting with unstable versions of operating systems that sometimes fall to crashes. You can either live boot or install the system wherever required. It is better than a bootable USB stick, especially for live booting, since it contains a good amount of space.
It is dead easy to create a bootable SSD with a lot of free tools such as Rufus for Windows, Balena Etcher for Linux, and Disk Utility for macOS. Once set up, the SSD is ready to perform system repairs, test new operating systems, and perform clean installations.
This use case is mostly for professionals, tech enthusiasts who always look for a faster way to recover from any kind of issue/troubleshooting.
5. Set It Up as a Dedicated Game Drive
Smooth gameplay is not only about a good graphics card or CPU, but the storage speed plays a major role in it. Making the use of an old SSD for the same can give you a whole new experience in gaming, reducing the load time, and improving the overall responsiveness.
Games installed on SSD launch relatively quicker, and also the frame transitions are smoother, and suffer fewer texture drops.
Also, you can shift the entire game library from your internal to SSD via built-in game launchers such as Steam or Epic Games. Many modern PCs support external SSDs via USB. Besides, the gaming consoles like PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox One/Series allow external SSDs to store and play games.
6. Use It for a DIY NAS or Home Media Server
You can also use an old SSD to create a file-sharing system. By integrating it into a DIY network-attached storage, you can lay a perfect foundation for your own home media center. You can create a high-speed, low-cost storage hub that can serve your household’s digital needs.
Also, using your SSD with open-source software like OpenMediaVault and TrueNAS, you can build a lightweight NAS that can handle file storage, remote access, and backups. This idea of repurposing is for users who don’t want to rely on commercial cloud storage for their needs and have an old SSD in reserve.
Conclusion
Repurposing old tech pieces isn’t just about saving money, but it is also a step towards a sustainable method of living, reusing the ever-growing electronic waste. By reusing an electric component like SSDs, we can reduce strain on our environment and reduce the footprint while still getting some great performance out of the gear.
From turning an SSD into a portable drive to giving a new life to your old laptop to creating something as creative as a Raspberry Pi project or holding an entire home-based cloud storage, an old SSD can be the backbone of all.
Have you ever used some other technique of repurposing your old SSD? Comment on the ideas, we will involve it here in the post for sure.