Do you like using Facebook Marketplace? I’ll be honest with you: I don’t. You’re so often left to deal with scammers and/or bots that finding an actual person who will sell or buy the exact same thing they said they would is like finding a unicorn. But when you do find that unicorn deal, it can be so good, which is what keeps me coming back.
I recently found out that Facebook Marketplace can be an absolute gold mine when you want more PC storage, and during the RAM-pocalypse, every option is worth exploring.
Apple AirPort Time Capsules are basically old routers wrapped around hard drives
Don’t confuse them with the regular AirPort Extreme
Apple’s AirPort Time Capsule is one of my favorite examples of random “junk” you might be able to find on FB Marketplace, and actually walk away making a profit. It’s one of those things that most people don’t assume is any good, but when all you need is the hard drive, you don’t have to be picky.
This old Apple router came with a built-in hard drive designed for Time Machine backups. Depending on the generation, you’ll find models with 1TB, 2TB, or even 3TB drives inside. They’re also not some weird, proprietary HDDs—they’re your typical old SATAs. Once you buy one, you can just crack it open and poach the HDD, leaving the empty husk of a router to go to recycling.
Just make sure you’re actually buying a Time Capsule and not a regular AirPort Extreme. They look similar, but the Extreme doesn’t have an HDD, so you’d be buying tech junk.
Facebook Marketplace is full of these at the moment, with prices ranging from $20 to well over $100.
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Old TiVo boxes can be worth more for the drive than the DVR
The subscription may be useless, but SATA is SATA
Credit: Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek
TiVo boxes are another funny one, because you might think they were lost to time and belong in the 00s, but they still have their uses. Just perhaps not as a DVR, but rather as a vessel for an HDD you can poach for your own needs.
Depending on the model, you can find anything from a few hundred gigabytes to multiple terabytes of storage, and many of those boxes used old SATA drives. Older TiVo Premiere models use 3.5-inch HDDs, while newer ones like the Bolt switched to 2.5-inch variants. It’s worth checking the exact model before you buy.
The main catch with buying one of these is that it likely spent its time working hard. Those TiVo boxes spent their lives recording TV, and often that meant doing so for years on end, so the drive could be pretty run-down. Some TiVos sell for as little as $10.
Security camera DVRs and NVRs can hide the best drives of the bunch
Look for the recorder even if the cameras are worthless
Credit: Jacob Hudson / How-to Geek
Security cameras can be an awesome deal when bought on FB Marketplace. Storage is the whole point (although many just send stuff to the cloud, so don’t get stuck with one of those). You might get up to 4TB or more of storage available in one of these, and they often sell for relatively cheap.
The best part is that some sets use surveillance-grade drives, so you might be able to get something really good, such as WD Purple or Seagate SkyHawk. Those are still standard SATA HDDs, so you can use them whenever.
The downside is similar to that of the TiVo boxes: those drives may have spent years running 24/7, which means they’ll be more than a little well loved by the time you get your hands on them.
A broken Xbox One may contain a perfectly healthy laptop drive
Especially if the console failed for some completely unrelated reason
Credit: Ismar Hrnjicevic / How-To Geek
Old consoles are generally a great source of hardware, especially if they failed for reasons unrelated to the storage drive. Xbox Series X|S consoles are still super expensive right now, but no one’s stopping you from dipping into the vast pool of Xbox Ones instead.
The original Xbox One and Xbox S used standard 2.5-inch SATA HDDs, with capacities of up to 2TB. That means that even a console that’s not super functional (let’s say it has a dead HDMI port or something) can be a source of heaps of storage.
Broken PS4s make the drive ridiculously easy to identify
Sony actually designed this one to be replaceable
Credit: Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek
I actually scavenged some drives from a couple of PlayStation 4 consoles in the past (as well as laptops). The PS4 is a super easy target, mostly because Sony actually expected people to replace the storage themselves, and it used 2.5-inch SATA drives with capacities of 500GB to 1TB. Dismantling the drive is really easy because of the aforementioned self-upgrade/replacement path.
There’s also some chance you might stumble upon a better drive than what came with the stock PS4, so keep an eye out for extra great deals.
Broken all-in-one PCs are worth checking before they go to recycling
A smashed screen doesn’t necessarily mean dead storage
Credit: Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek
Old Windows 10 PCs can be repurposed as a NAS, but old PCs in general—especially of the all-in-one kind—can make an excellent hunting ground for some hardware. Odds are that at least some of the parts inside the PC still work just fine, and if the drive is one of them, you can give it a new life in a different computer.
When it comes to AIOs, plenty of them used standard 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch HDDs, and many might still work fine. Newer drives use M.2 SSDs, though, and that’s a great deal, but they’ll often be soldered to the board, making them much less lucrative if the rest of the PC doesn’t work well (or at all).
Don’t trust a cheap drive until you’ve tested it
Before you go wild shopping for used gear and then entrust those restored HDDs with difficult, important jobs, make sure you can actually trust them first. As a general rule of thumb, even after extensive testing, I wouldn’t treat these old HDDs as the only backup target. Follow the 3-2-1 rule and enjoy your cheap storage wisely.
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