Repurposing old PC components is always recommended, but sometimes, you can't figure out anything useful for hardware you're no longer actively using. That's what happened with my 250GB SATA SSD when I switched to NVMe storage years ago. The SATA drive was the first SSD I had ever used, and it transformed my PC experience. After the move to NVMe, though, the SATA SSD remained unused for years. Windows 10 was my primary OS, but when I needed to install Windows 11 for work, I finally found a good use for the SATA SSD. It was just large enough for a Windows partition, plus it saved me the hassle of dual-booting Windows 10 and 11. Additionally, the old drive was perfect as a testing ground for stuff I didn't want running on my primary NVMe SSD. I could also use the SATA SSD as an external or recovery SSD in the future, provided it remains healthy enough.

👁 An image of a crucial ssd on a table.
5 clever ways to repurpose an old SSD instead of throwing it away

It's common to have old SATA or NVMe SSDs lying around, but you can put them to good use with these ideas

My SATA SSD had been gathering dust for years

I just couldn't find a viable use case for it

Until 2018, I had never used an SSD. For over 18 years, my PCs ran on spinning drives. Even when SATA SSDs had been on the market for a few years, they were too expensive. However, when I couldn't resist it any longer, I bought a Samsung 860 EVO for around $60, which was pretty expensive for a 250GB drive. The benefits were worth it, though. A few years later, NVMe SSDs had gotten affordable enough that I could switch to a 1TB WD Blue SN550. It was a Gen3 drive, but still way faster than the SATA SSD I was using. The latter remained unused for years as I added a Gen4 SSD for a total of 2TB of NVMe storage.

The older 250GB drive was too small to be used as secondary storage. Using it for gaming didn't feel right either, since I didn't want to let go of the slight performance edge I could get on my NVMe SSDs. Also, selling the drive didn't feel worth the hassle, since I wouldn't have gotten anything close to what I had paid for it. So, I felt that the best thing to do was to keep the SSD with me till I found something useful for it to do.

👁 XDA
Quiz
8 Questions · Test Your Knowledge

Storage Technology
Trivia Challenge

From spinning platters to blazing-fast NVMe — how well do you really know the tech storing your digital life?

NANDNVMeHistoryInterfacesFuture Tech
01 / 8History

What year did IBM introduce the first commercial hard disk drive, the IBM 350, as part of the RAMAC system?

Correct! The IBM 350 debuted in 1956 as part of the RAMAC 305 system, offering a whopping 5 MB of storage across 50 spinning platters. It was the size of two refrigerators and leased for around $3,200 per month — inflation-adjusted, that's an eye-watering sum for 5 megabytes.
Not quite. The IBM 350 was introduced in 1956 alongside the RAMAC 305 system. It stored just 5 MB across 50 large platters and was physically enormous — a far cry from the thin drives we tuck into laptops today.
02 / 8NAND

Which type of NAND flash stores 3 bits of data per cell, offering high density but lower endurance compared to older types?

Correct! TLC, or Triple-Level Cell NAND, stores 3 bits per cell, making it denser and cheaper than SLC or MLC. The tradeoff is reduced write endurance and slightly slower speeds, though modern controllers and DRAM caching help mitigate these limitations in consumer SSDs.
Not quite. TLC (Triple-Level Cell) is the correct answer here — it stores 3 bits per cell. QLC goes even further with 4 bits per cell, while SLC (1 bit) and MLC (2 bits) offer better endurance but at higher cost and lower density.
03 / 8Interfaces

What does the acronym NVMe stand for in the context of SSD technology?

Correct! NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express, a protocol designed specifically to leverage the low latency and parallelism of NAND flash over the PCIe bus. Unlike AHCI, which was built for spinning hard drives, NVMe allows for massive queue depths and dramatically lower latency.
Not quite. NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express. It's a storage protocol built from the ground up for flash-based storage over PCIe, replacing the older AHCI protocol that was originally designed with mechanical hard drives in mind.
04 / 8Interfaces

What is the maximum theoretical throughput of the SATA III interface used by most 2.5-inch SSDs?

Correct! SATA III tops out at 6 Gbps, which translates to roughly 600 MB/s of real-world throughput after encoding overhead. While that was impressive in its day, modern NVMe drives on PCIe 4.0 can hit over 7,000 MB/s — making SATA a significant bottleneck for high-performance workloads.
Not quite. SATA III has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 6 Gbps, or around 600 MB/s in practice. It's still plenty for everyday computing, but it's a far cry from what modern PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 NVMe drives are capable of delivering.
05 / 8NAND

What key structural innovation did 3D NAND introduce over planar (2D) NAND flash?

Correct! 3D NAND stacks memory cells vertically in dozens to hundreds of layers, rather than shrinking them further on a flat plane. This approach overcame the physical limits of planar NAND scaling, improving density, endurance, and even performance while keeping manufacturing costs manageable.
Not quite. The defining innovation of 3D NAND is the vertical stacking of memory cells — sometimes 200+ layers high in modern dies. This allowed manufacturers to scale capacity without pushing cell sizes to impractical extremes, which had begun causing reliability issues in late-generation planar NAND.
06 / 8History

Which company invented NAND flash memory, and in what decade was it first developed?

Correct! NAND flash was invented by Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba in the mid-1980s, with the design presented publicly at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting in 1987. The name 'NAND' refers to the logic gate structure used in the cell array, and the technology would go on to revolutionize portable storage.
Not quite. NAND flash was invented by Fujio Masuoka while working at Toshiba in the 1980s. Intel actually pioneered NOR flash around the same time, which is a different architecture still used today in firmware and embedded applications.
07 / 8Future Tech

Which emerging non-volatile memory technology uses resistance changes in a material to store data and is often seen as a potential successor to NAND?

Correct! ReRAM, or Resistive RAM, stores data by switching a material between high and low resistance states. It promises faster speeds, lower power consumption, and better endurance than NAND flash. Companies like Intel (with Optane, based on 3D XPoint, a related concept) and startups worldwide have been racing to bring ReRAM to mass market.
Not quite. ReRAM (Resistive RAM) is the answer — it stores bits by toggling material resistance rather than trapping charge like NAND. MRAM uses magnetic states and FeRAM uses ferroelectric polarization; both are also emerging technologies, but ReRAM is most often highlighted as a direct NAND challenger for storage applications.
08 / 8NVMe

PCIe 5.0-based NVMe SSDs can reach sequential read speeds exceeding which milestone that was unthinkable for consumer drives just a few years ago?

Correct! PCIe 5.0 NVMe drives like the Crucial T705 and Corsair MP700 Pro have broken the 10,000 MB/s sequential read barrier — a number that would have seemed absurd for a consumer product just five years ago. The doubled bandwidth of PCIe 5.0 over Gen 4 makes this leap possible, though real-world gains in everyday tasks are more nuanced.
Not quite. PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs have pushed sequential reads past 10,000 MB/s on flagship models. While 7,000 MB/s was the benchmark-busting figure for top PCIe 4.0 drives, Gen 5 effectively doubled the available bandwidth, enabling a whole new class of storage performance for enthusiasts and professionals.
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Everything changed when I needed a Windows 11 installation

I used it, but I didn't have to like it

I vowed never to switch to Windows 11, and I'm still using Windows 10 as my primary operating system. It entered its EOL phase last year, but I'm staying on Windows 10 a little longer, just like hundreds of millions of other users. However, that doesn't mean I've not touched Windows 11 to date. Since I write articles for a living, I couldn't stay away from Microsoft's latest OS for long. I needed a Windows 11 installation on my PC for screenshots and research, but I didn't want to move away from Windows 10 just yet. That's when I remembered I had the perfect solution — install Windows 11 on my old SATA SSD, and keep using Windows 10 on my primary SSD.

Samsung 9100 Pro SSD
7.5/10
Form factor
M.2 (2280)
Storage capacity
1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB

I didn't want to dual-boot on my NVMe drive for multiple reasons. First, dual-booting Windows 10 and 11 would have meant dealing with Fast Boot issues, as it's known to interfere with dual-boot setups. It can cause weird behavior on one or the other OS, and can even prevent you from booting the OS entirely. Second, I've faced file corruption and partitioning conflicts with dual-boot setups in the past, and wanted to avoid those problems entirely. Besides, why waste space for a Windows 11 partition on my NVMe storage when I have a perfectly capable SATA SSD lying around? Whenever I needed to use Windows 11 for an article, I booted into the SATA SSD, finished my work, and ran back to my Windows 10 installation as fast as possible.

A bonus of using a dedicated drive for Windows 11 was that it also became a contained test bench for anything I didn't want on my primary storage. Testing beta updates to Windows 11, aggressive PC cleaners and performance boosters, and questionable software wouldn't be possible without a disk I was willing to lose. Repurposing my old SATA SSD meant I was giving new life to hardware that I would have thrown away otherwise. It allowed me to stick to Windows 10 for longer, and save the environment, too.

I could turn the old SSD into external storage or a recovery drive

After permanently moving to Windows 11

I know I won't be able to use Windows 10 forever; its days are numbered. Once the ESU program expires, and it becomes wildly unprotected, I will have to jump ship to Windows 11. At that point, I won't need the secondary Windows 11 setup on the SATA SSD that I've been using for years. However, that doesn't mean that my old SSD will go back to the drawer. Now that I've put it to good use as a Windows 11 drive, I won't rest until I use it in some way or another.

The first thing on my mind is using it as a recovery drive. Windows 11 isn't unfamiliar with weird file corruption, stability issues, or serious instability. It might be rare, but it happens. If I want to be prepared, I need to create a recovery drive before anything bad happens, not after. For this, I will need a bootable operating system, an antivirus program, and a data recovery tool installed on the SATA SSD. A tool like Ventoy allows you to install multiple operating systems on a single drive. Given the SSD's size, I'll have to keep the number limited.

Another way to reuse the SATA SSD is by converting it into an external SSD by way of an enclosure. A SATA-to-USB enclosure for around $10 is all I'll need to make it happen. 250GB isn't large, but it's enough when I want to carry movies or shows from my PC to the TV, or to a friend's place.

Bringing my old SATA SSD back from the dead

I had mostly given up on my 250GB SATA SSD after switching permanently to NVMe storage. I only came back to it when I needed a dedicated drive for Windows 11. After recognizing its usefulness, I intend to repurpose it in different ways once I switch to Windows 11 permanently. Converting it to an external SSD or a recovery drive are some use cases that are both useful and sorely needed in my setup.

Ugreen NASync iDX 6011 Pro
9/10
CPU
Intel Core Ultra 7 255H
Memory
64 GB DDR5