Do I Need An External Hard Drive?

[Dusty Bin]

I have a 7 year old PC which uses windows XP.

It has 38.2GB of disk space, but only just over 7GB of free space.

Most of the space, I think, has been used up by My Music as I have over 1000 songs on my PC and about half a dozen videos.

Would getting an external hard drive help free up some disk space?

(Sorry if this is a really simple question to answer and if I appear idiotic to even ask it, but I don't understand what an external hard drive is really or how they work.)

[boxtops]

Having lost a lot of material when our computer crashed a while back, we back everything up to an external hard drive, it's on all the time. We don't download so we use it purely as a backup, a duplicate of what's on the C drive.

[ChuckFickens]

You have an internal hard drive in your computer which is 40GB in size.

An external hard drive is exactly as it sounds, an additional hard drive that you plug into a USB socket (normally) to enable you to increase the storage available to you without having to replace the internal hard drive

If you were to get an external hard drive you could move your music, films, pictures, documents etc onto the external drive and the space would be freed up on your internal drive.

If you were to do this you would (obviously) only be able to access the files on the external drive when it's plugged in. You also can only really store your personal files on an external drive, you should not install software onto the external drive (you can do it, but it's a really bad idea)

[Dusty Bin]

Thank you both.

Any tips please on what type of, or which, external drive I should consider getting?

[Charlie911]

I bought one (in the other room) a make I'd never heard of and very cheap. T! (if that means anything to you? Perfect for my needs :-)

[boxtops]

Ours is Buffalo

[VHG]

Simple explanation of an external hard drive.

Inside your computer you have a hard drive. This will be your C drive or your D drive and so on (NOT your CD drive though).

ALL the files on your computer are held on this hard drive (Windows, programs, personal files etc).

An external hard drive is a hard drive inside a small box that plugs INTO your compter via the USB port.

It then becomes a "new" drive letter (E:, F:. G:, H: or whatever). The letter will vary depending what letters you already have on your PC.

You can then use this external hard drive as spare or temporary hard drive space.

Many people use it to "backup" their files from their main PC (as boxtops says if your PC crashes this can be very useful).

Couple of things to note.

1) It is not fixed to your PC so it can be moved and plugged into other PCs that your own or other people own.

2) Because it is not fixed you cant install Windows or programs on it.

3) You only free up space on your hard dirve if you MOVE files to it, not if you COPY files to it.

4) You can move your music to it, but you have to make sure any program you use to play music (itunes etc) can find it afterwards.

Nowadays I think EVERYBODY should have an external hard drive.

I have 3 and backup everything onto three different external hard drives (mind you I do have 4 computers in my house).

[VHG]

Chuck and I seem to be answering things at the same time.

His answer was not there when I started typing mine.

[boxtops]

we've lost our CD drive (which used to be D) - can't find it anywhere, put a CD in, the computer just can't see it.

[ChuckFickens]

Boxtops...

use the fix me half way down this page
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929461

Apologies for going of topic on your thread Dusty Bin

[Bobbisox]

Chuck, talking of ex HD, I have a Buffalo mini-station which I have plugged in via a USB but Windows 7 isn't showing it, I can hear the drive going but when I look in 'My Computer'...nothing?

[Dusty Bin]

Thanks again for replying.

I'm now pretty certain I do need an external hard drive (which answers my original question), but what type should I be looking for?

What's the difference between an e.h.d. for a desktop PC as opposed to one for a laptop (if there is one)?

What difference does the rpm value make?

How many GBs will it need to have?

[boxtops]

cheers chuck, will do (apologies too to dustybin)

[Bobbisox]

sorry dusty , me too pet

[boxtops]

Bobbi (sorry dusty again) if you go to My Computer, our Buffalo shows up on the K drive. (not sure if this helps)

[Bobbisox]

I will give this a try pet, cheers

[ChuckFickens]

a EHD for a laptop will be based on a small physical size drive and would be powered by the computer via the USB (assuming you have USB2.0 ports)

One for a desktop will be physically larger and will have an external mains power adaptor.

RPM is how fast the drive spins, the faster it spins the faster information can be read from the drive, this value is not of that much relevance when dealing with external hard drives (even less so if they are used with older computers!)

How many GB is how much the drive can store, get the largest you can afford, 500GB laptop EHDs are cheap enough and 1TBs (1024GB) are pretty cheap in desktop form.

As for brand...... it doesn't really make a huge difference in my experience... remember they are extremely delicate items when they are running and any shocks while running can easily kill the drive. keep that in mind and they are all pretty reliable.

[jno]

you may also be able to buy extra memory for your computer.

http://www.microsoft..../setup/addmemory.aspx

[ChuckFickens]

Errr, jno, memory and hard drives are totally different things.

[VHG]

You can get a 1Tb external hard drive for about £50-£55 nowadays.

This is the larger desktop model and would need to be plugged into the mains for it to work.

I saw a Western Digital one in Tesco the other day for about £54

[VHG]

Note a "desktop" external hard drive can be used with a laptop, and a "laptop" external hard drive can be used with a desktop.

As Chuck says, the main difference is that the desktop models have to be plugged into the mains, the laptop models get their power from the USB port so can be used on the move.