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November 4th, 2005 22:00
Curious about external hard drives
I need some advice concerning external hadrives. I have been planning on adding an external hard drive to my system. I plan to use it as my main back-up and long term file storage media. I currently use 250 and 750 MB zip disks with an external 750 MB zip drive. I need to switch media systems... I am beginng to accumulate way too many zip disks. I am litterally running out of physical storage space. My current collection of disks spans close to twenty seperate disks, with almost ten gigabytes of files between them.
After looking at several possible options, I have found a suitable one. But before I buy, I need to ask afew questions. I hope someone in these forums can answer them.
1) Are external hard drive anything like internal IDE hard drives? Will I have to boot my system from the Windows CD in order to format and configure the external hard drive?
2) Something I may want to do is install a copy of WindowsXP on the hardrive, so I can boot the system off of it if there is something wrong with the internal hard drive. Is it possible to install Windows on a external hard drive?
3) If it is possible to install Windows on an external hard drive, is there a way to instruct the system to boot off of it instead of the main hard drive?
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Posted November 5th, 2005 01:00
Having USB 2.0 support isn't a problem, my computer is Dimension E510. As for the question of booting from a USB device... I went into the computers boot options menu. It shows me three options:
#1 Onboard SATA Hard Drive (I'm guessing that reffers to the internal Hard Drive)
#2 Onboard or USB CD-ROM (That reffers to booting from the Windows CD in a CD Drive, right?)
#3 USB Device (I thing that's what I'ld need to select to boot off of the external Hard Drive)
- Hi everyone!! I bought the WD "My Book" 250GB external hard drive, and I have some questions before I get underway. The main reason I bought this is because everytime I want to upgrade my computer, I have to spend hours transferring data from one system to the other, and I thought it would be simpler to just keep the reference 'stuff' on this external hard drive.My question is this: I have a Dell 8300 that I am passing along to my children, and I have a Dell 8400 that I will be using.Can I install this WD drive to the 8300, transfer all the data that I want to keep, to this WD drive, then install the drive to my 8400?Also, if there is software built in the WD drive, and I want to reformat it to NTSF, will I lose the software?Appreciate help from your experts in this forum. You have not failed me yet!!!!:)Jeannette
- Yes, you can use it on one system and move it to another.
Ok, I just got one of these and checking the manual, it's preformatted in FAT32, but the instructions on changing to NTFS are included. So you're all set.
Message Edited by osprey4 on 03-31-2007 07:35 AM - I've got my new My Book 250-GB set up and, WOW!, I'm impressed how fast it is. I repartitioned to NTFS and I am not using the WD software (I have my own utility). It's got to be twice the speed of the old 60-GB external drive I was using (which will go to my father). My only complaint is the vibration, but it's easy to turn off.
Peruse the CD/DVD forum some time if you need clarification on the media in question. :)
osprey4
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Posted November 4th, 2005 23:00