What can you do with an old computer?

Old computers are there in your house. You used them for years but your new Intel or AMD processor leaves them behind on most tasks.

Is there anything else you can use the old computer for instead of the recycling or eBay?

Yes you can!

The best use you can give to an old computer is to use it as storage and backup. This might sound old fashioned compared with cloud storage or external hard disks but it's not.

Let me explain.

When you save your most precious data on the cloud, you risk having your data hacked like the celebrities had in the last weeks. Totally out of question because chances are you save everything you have in the computer. That includes passwords and other details no one can know about, right? Storing the same data on an external hard disk has also the disadvantage of damage. Since you can carry that little drive anywhere, the chances of damage are also quite high. If you drop it on the floor you say goodbye to the files. If you accidentally let something drop on it, goodbye files.

With an old computer you can have up to 4 drives per machine, each one with several TB of data and everything is safe inside the old machine. With a SATA to IDE adapter you can easily install new hard disks even on a machine designed for IDE. If your old machine already supports SATA drives then the task is even easier. The old machine will store all your files, will have it's own operating system and that machine will never be connected to the internet to make the files totally safe from hacking.

To access these files you don't need a screen or a keyboard. The network cable is there to help. TO access these backups or stored files, all you need is to add the old computer to the network and share the files with your new machine. With Windows 7 and 8, seeing thos files is so easy, just like if you were browsing your own computer. But you don't want to browse the files one by one. You want to search them. Fortunatelly there are solutions. With Copernic desktop search or X1 desktop search indexing thos files is done on auto pilot if you select the option. It will take some hours or some days (depending on how many files you want to index) but after the initial work is done, with a fast computer like Intel i7 or AMD 8 Core with the SSD drive, searching for anything you can think can be done as fast as your fingers can type.

For security, that computer should not be always connected to your main computer. You should connect the cable only when you need to backup something, like every week or even every day. Just disconnect the main computer from the internet to avoid any chances of having a hacker attacking when you are transfering all the data.