Re: The whole activation scheme for a lot of stuff drives me nuts.
The way I use the extra HDDs (My aging Dell has room for 5) is that when I replaced my last PC I kept the data by slapping it into the new one, nuking the C: drive for extra space and carrying on using it as my backup drive. Automated backups.
Then when I salvaged a HDD from a TV recorder - that went in too. That contains a drive image or two (Macrium Reflect).
I now have another hardly used HDD and it's tempting to replace one of the DVD writers- they aren't much use anymore. The only things holding me back are that I long since lost the bit of facia and that one of them ( the original one) might be tied to Windows Activation.
<yay> back on topic </yay>