this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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PC Master Race

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Replace Dell SATA II 2 TB HDD (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 days ago by damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world to c/pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
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Hi!

After a long time, my Dell SATA II 2 TB HDD has started showing yellow on CrystalDisk.

The recommendation seems to be to get data out of it sooner than later and replace it.

My main usecase for it is as the main space where I install Windows programs and store Plex media. My C drive is SSD but much smaller. This HDD is D drive.

Seagate's selling an 8 TB SSD for CAD$189 and a 2 TB one for CAD $101.

Question for you good folks -

  1. Anything I can do before I consider throwing money at this problem? Bad/Unrecoverable sectors seem to be at 100. But is there still a way I can get more life out of this drive? Or is it living it's last breaths?
  2. What HDD should I go for? I'm optimizing for price and the use cases I mentioned above.
  3. If I do go the replacement route, what's the best way for me to move drives? Should I clone the old to the new or copy files one by one? I do want to maintain the Program Files status of D drive. So I would be making the new drive as my D drive. Any FOSS tools for this transition?

Thanks!

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[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Barracuda is Seagate's basic value line so makes sense everything is SMR. Especially since you're shopping for 2.5" laptop drives.
The ironwolf drives are more enterprise focused so they're noisier, might be why it's cheaper. But they're a good option all around. (Frankly day to day hard drive prices are random anyway...)

No they don't typically come with any hardware to hook up, it's assumed you plug it into your computer. However you can get USB to SATA adapters, with an external 12v power brick for mechanical drives, fairly cheap on amazon et al. I have one from U-Green that works fine and is also a USB hub and SD card reader. They're great to have around just in case.

[–] damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I have a U-Green SSD reader that I needed to test an SSD in the past. The drive was a bust but the tool was neat! I’ll go looking for the HDD version too. Does… it supply power too?

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

Those adapters supply 5v power from the USB port, but SATA adapters capable of running hard drives usually have an external 12v power brick, as most full size hard drives need 12v for the drive motor.

Now, that said, I think a lot of 2.5inch hard drives do use 5 volt only and might boot up fine from an SSD SATA adapter. It's worth trying your existing adapter as is and seeing if it starts and recognizes the drive.