How to use old EIDE drives

[zoran]

Id like to read suggestions on how to use old EIDE drives -both sum up to 100GB- in their enclosures.
A thought was to use them as space for Virtual Memory/Scratch Disks for Photoshop.
I cant wait to hear your thoughts.

 

[chown33]

Disks used for VM or Photoshop scratch disks should be fast.

How fast are your disks?

If you don't know, and don't know how to measure their speed, then tell us the machine and OS they're being used on, and someone may be able to suggest how to measure the speed.

 

[chrfr]

Id like to read suggestions on how to use old EIDE drives -both sum up to 100GB- in their enclosures.
A thought was to use them as space for Virtual Memory/Scratch Disks for Photoshop.
I cant wait to hear your thoughts.

They'll be far too slow to be of value in any modern workflow, especially not for Photoshop.

 

[zoran]

If you don't know, and don't know how to measure their speed, then tell us the machine and OS they're being used on, and someone may be able to suggest how to measure the speed.

Monterey . M1 MBPro

 

[chrfr]

Monterey . M1 MBPro

Yeah, those disks are not of any value to you in terms of performance, if they still work.
An EIDE disk's maximum theoretical speed is about 133MB/sec (but no disks really got too close to this). This compares to the internal disk of your MacBook which is well upwards of 2000MB/sec.

 

[velocityg4]

They don't have any practical value. Too slow for modern usage. Too old and unreliable for file storage. You could toss them into a vintage computer. If you ever get one. Mostly they'd work in mid 90's to mid 00's computers. Even then you can get a 120GB SSD and EIDE adapter for so cheap. I couldn't imagine using them in a vintage computer.

 

[Fishrrman]

As others have said ... too slow for use as online scratch or cache drives.

You might be able to find a USB2 enclosure to use them with.
They could be good for archiving old files that aren't "critical" but still nice to keep around.

 

[jz0309]

agree with everyone that they are too slow for your intended purpose. Beyond that, I quite frankly would not trust them for anything, esp not backup. they must be 10+ years old I'm guessing ...

 

[zoran]

Both drives have their enclosures and are 100% operational but they are too bulky to keep on the desk and i wanted to keep it clean and simple... if only there was a dock that the user could add parts depending on how many hdd would be needed to be added.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

You said in post 1 that both drives total up to about (only) 100gbs, is that right?

Don't waste your time worrying about this.

Get a 128gb 2.5" SATA SSD. These can be bought for $20.

Get an enclosure like this:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free Clear External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Supports UASP SATA III] (EC-OCUB)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free Clear External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Supports UASP SATA III] (EC-OCUB)

www.amazon.com

Put the drive in the enclosure
Erase it to HFS+ (Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format)
Copy the data from each drive to it.

Then... retire the two old drives.

Problem... solved.