[cmchavez]

Currently I have a 200 gig system drive that I back up only the personal documents and settings folders to a separate, external 160 gig drive; basically my CYA drive to prevent my wife from killing me over digital photos that haven't yet been burned to backup disks.

I'd probably swap out the main system drive for a larger drive, then use the 200 gig drive as a secondary storage drive with a recurring Robocopy task to provide a secondary backup copy of all the essential files.

[cmchavez]

Currently I have a 200 gig system drive that I back up only the personal documents and settings folders to a separate, external 160 gig drive; basically my CYA drive to prevent my wife from killing me over digital photos that haven't yet been burned to backup disks.

I'd probably swap out the main system drive for a larger drive, then use the 200 gig drive as a secondary storage drive with a recurring Robocopy task to provide a secondary backup copy of all the essential files.

[dirtboy]

I will replace the HD in my synology box. When the power goes out and it reboots, sometimes the 500 GB drive inside it won't spin up. I have a feeling it is on its way out, but I have't the cash to replace it right now.

[moonwalker_v2]

Hi,
I use my external USB 80 GB hard disk along with my built in 160 GB hard disk of my HP laptop. I would like to use one of these contest prize hard disks as storage for my HD movies.

[DustyLBottoms]

I'm going to use the drive as a replacement for a media computer that I let my kids watch DVDs on. Ours crashed last week! Our current (crashed) drive is an 80GB unit.

[genezou]

I am going adding more harddrive into the pool of harddrives in my Windows Home Server.

[tregnier]

My computer is 5 years old and has an eide drive. I would like to replace my old drive before it fails, with something bigger and faster.

[tabi13]

I currently have a 500gb drive in my system which is quickly filling up due to my main 2 interests

1. Photography (shooting with a Canon 40d)
2. PC games

I could REALLY use this drive as a dedicated disk to hold all my pictures.

[etalos]

First of all, It's awesome that you're giving your old hardware away, helping out others that could actually make good use of it.

If I would be one of the lucky people to win, here's what I'd likely do...

Buy an external drive enclosure, probably a vantec (nexstar) product as they've been pretty decent for me.

This would be an external/portable drive for a few different uses. I would partition it into multiple parts so that at least the first partition could be an OS, and at least another for data. But for the most part here's a few uses:

1. Load an alternate boot system mainly for recovery of my netbook (hp mini 110) so that I don't need to use a usb key; plus I'd have the disk backup data right there to restore from.

2. Data drive to store big files or lesser used files that don't need to clutter the local disk drive (photos,docs,games). This would keep performance up on the local OS drive.

3. Use the external drive as a repository for CD Images. Basically using a virtual cd/dvd drive and loading images off disk is a great way to let netbooks install software I have only on CD/DVD discs. It's pretty simple really, getting VirtualCloneDrive, and mounting images created with ImageBurn can almost make up for the absence of a physical drive in netbooks.

Thanks for all the great reviews!

[dbng]

I'd drop it in an enclosure and use it for much needed backup.

[Cold Flame]

I would likely use it as my excuse to finally format, and put Windows 7 on. I'd use my current hard drive (which is ~6 years old), and likely use it as a temporary storage spot for things I need to burn and haven't had the time to yet. I have a feeling it's on its way out, and I don't like having it as my primary drive right now!