A reader asks: “Should I replace my 5yr old hard drive with a smaller SSD and keep it as external storage; or buy a cheaper and bigger hard drive?”

A 5-year-old hard drive is probably near the end of its safe service life. I wouldn’t recommend reusing it for anything essential or irreplaceable.

But using it as a secondary scratchpad drive, or as redundant or tertiary storage, you might be able to squeeze a bit more life out of the old drive.

The rest is up to you and your budget. Ideally, aim for having an SSD that’s large enough to hold your OS and at least your most-frequently-used files. You can use an inexpensive second/external hard drive to hold your backups and less-frequently-accessed files; and use your 5-year-old drive for anything else.

BTW: Drive prices are insanely low these days. It’s a great time to be drive-shopping!

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