Testing old drives as external storage to avoid price hikes — hard drive, SATA SSD, and NVMe in enclosures up to 80 Gbps, tested

Tom's Hardware tested a 2011 HDD, a 2014 SATA SSD, and a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD in external enclosures.

It also compared them with dedicated external SSDs and USB flash drives to measure the value of repurposed storage.

The results show older internal drives can still be useful for backups and transfers, especially for lighter workloads.

As storage prices rise, turning old drives into DIY external storage looks like a practical low-cost option.