If I buy a new HP desktop, can I connect my old HP desktop to it to act as an additional storage?

[1234Charles]

My current HP desktop has 16 GB RAM and a 1TB hard drive installed. Or would I just add it to my home network as a shared computer? I would like to use it to store not just old files but also use it to store home security videos.

[Hiatus · Accepted solution]

You could either take the disc from your old desktop and put in in your new one as an extra internal drive or get an external USB3 cabinet so you could use the drive as portable storage as well. That would be the most economical way to go. To have a computer running only to keep one single drive going for storage seems a bit overkill.

The network connected setup would work, of course. To get more out of your two desktops, you could set up the old one as a NAS in which you could install more drives to run as a dedicated file server. If you're in to that kind of fun.

Maybe look into a RAID setup for faster speed and safe-ish backups with multiple drives?!

But if you don't need anything other than the single drive from the old desktop, I would recommend a simple drive transplant.
You'll get faster reed/write speeds from SATA than over ethernet/wifi and you save a couple of bucks in electricity as well.

Hiatus