Old Win XP tower's hard drives as storage?

[Kevsource]

Hi all:

I'm a recent Mac convert (2010 Mac Mini w/external HD for extra storage/Time Capsule), but before I toss out my old Win XP tower, I thought, "Well, there *are* two 80GB hard drives in there...wonder if I could somehow network them so they could be used for storage."

Dunno if this is possible, but if I could somehow format those drives (hasn't been a simple task thus far) and connect an Airport Express with an ethernet cable to the tower so the drives can be seen on my network, perhaps they *could* be used for extra storage.

Thoughts, anyone? I've no idea how this is done, of course.

Thanks in advance...Kev

 

[simsaladimbamba]

It can be done, but it would be economically cheaper to get an enclosure for the type of HDDs you have, which either are S-ATA HDDs (if the tower was bought after 2005 or so) or P-ATA (IDE) HDDs (if the tower was bought earlier than 2005) and connect those enclosure to the Time Capsule or Mac mini.
Such enclosures can cost as low as 10 € for USB 2.0.
Find out the interface your HDDs use and get back to us.

PS: I just recommend this, as running two HDDs in an enclosure or two enclosures, uses much less energy than running the whole computer just for two HDDs.