Make Your Own External Hard Drive

Sitting on your desk—or in the closet—is an old desktop PC you never use. Every now and again, you remember that there are important files and pictures stored on its hard drive, and wonder whether it’s worth turning on the computer, waiting two minutes for it to boot, and copying the files over to a flash drive at USB 1.1 data rates.

It doesn’t need to be the chore you think it is. By unscrewing and popping out the old hard drive, you can quickly drop it into an inexpensive external hard drive enclosure, and poof: You’ve got a hard drive with easily transferable files that can also store all sorts of new data. The whole process will cost you less than $30, and takes about ten minutes.