Hi, not sure whether to post this in the 'Internal' or 'External' forum so i'll post it in both..;)
I need a new bigger HD (40GiG at least).
Removing the old 20GiG one and fitting the new should hopefully be fairly easy even for me, but installing WinXP Home on the new one would be beyond me.
Okay, what about this for an idea- I leave my old HD in place, then simply plug the new HD into the back of the PC, so that I'll then have 2 drives (an internal and an external) and can install new games and stuff on the new external one?
Is that apparently simple approach too good to be true? Can it be easily done?
I mean, it'll save me having to throw out my old drive and fit a new one inside, and it'll save me having to pay the shop to install WinXP Home on the new HD won't it?)

Why not just connect the drive internally? Easy to do, as long as you understand the difference between SATA and IDE drives (do not buy a SATA drive if your motherboard only supports IDE drives).

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=i...cond+hard+drive

What devices are now on this system...that is, how many hard drives, how many optical drives?

System model and manufacturer?

Louis

Using a second external hdd is a common practice, many use it to backup their main drive. Because of the 20GB size of the hdd I'm guessing that this is a IDE hdd. If this is the case, there should be room to add a second hdd inside the case, you simply connect the second hdd as a slave drive to the original master hdd on the same IDE cable with the jumpers set correctly for the master and slave. This would be the way that I would do this, I read a lot about members that have problems with their external drives being recognized plugged into the USB port, even after it has been successfully connected for some time. Here is a tutorial that explains how to do make the installation in very simple terms, it even has pictures.

One thing that I would suggest though, with the price of IDE hdds being as low as they are, I would look at a larger drive, like to 200GB. The price of a external hdd is much higher than a hdd that will mount inside your PC. You could purchase a 200GB internal hdd and have money left over compared to what you will spend on a external drive.

I love my external. while what dc said is 100% true, i think even now i'd rather have the external. for the simple fact that i'm completely paranoid about heat in my system. With the external it didn't add any plus if a file or something is too big for a dvd i can just put it on the external and take it somewhere and load er up that way. I thought i would see a performance drop running things off the external but if there is one i don't notice it. I really like my setup, but you gotta do whats good for you.

Well...I think it's a fact that a USB-connected drive...will not move data as rapidly as one connected directly to the system via either PATA/IDE or SATA.

If you do a lot of file transfers of large files (such as video or backups), the difference is quite noticeable for me.

Louis

A USB 2.0 has a bus speed of 480Mbps, a SATA hdd has a transfer rate of 300Mbps.

Edit: This information is correct...as far as it goes. But what is misleading here is the bus speed of the USB 2.0, this means nothing when you are searching for the accurate transfer rate. The USB controller is what determine the speed of the transfer and will be considerably slower that the internal connection for a hdd.

Sorry for the confusion Louis.

Dan

Okay thanx guys i bought a 120Gb external Toshiba HD yesterday and it's working fine, I just plugged its two plugs into my USB ports, if I'd known it was as simple as that i'd never have asked around the Help forums for advice..:)
(I daresay I could have gone bigger than 120Gb but I couldn't be bothered shopping around, it only cost me £55 (80 dollars) anyway, and 120 is more than enough)
It's a beautiful little thing, a 5 by 3-inch slimline rectangular box, no fan or anything, and unlike an internal model, no having to fiddle around fitting it inside the case ..:)

Thanks for the prompt correction, DC , apologies to all.

I now realize that I was really thinking of files transfer via network connection, compared to using a directly-connected hard drive...rather than what I stated. I move files a lot on my home network and this had started to vex me during the last year, with my solution just being to move the drives from one system to the other before doing massive file transfers.

Louis