back up drive advice needed

---

@aim2 wrote:

I am working on my parents Dimension 8200 , 40 GB HD  system which basically has not been updated (except for anti-virus) since it was purchased  and now the hard drive is near capacity with under 3 GB  available with no real back up system... yikes.  I would like to back up critical data via an external drive and the best deals seem to be the 160 GB and up drives.  However, from what I am understanding by reading the posts here is that I cannot use/is not safe to use  a 160 GB without one of the Service packs installed.

Also, would the bios need to be updated as well before I could use a 160 GB drive?

 

I do not want to do any updating before I back up their data.  Therefore I am asking if I can use the 160 GB drive safely (and not all of the size will be recognized until I update)  or do I simply have to look for a smaller drive (under the 137 limit) right now?

 

Thanks for your clarification and suggestions

 

In the future, by using the Advanced Forum Search on the bottom of this page, you can quite easily find the answer to this often asked question.

 

An external drive is controlled by the bios in the drive holder, NOT in the computer.  So, if it can handle the entire size, it will be recognized.  However, the computer MAY not see it all if Windows XP isn't updated to SP1 or higher. 

 

I'd buy an INTERNAL drive of the size you want, and move the 40gb over to the secondary internal position.  Make a slipstreamed XP CD including SP2 (or use another Dell disk with SP2 on it) for a clean install of XP, then drivers, then software, then copy over data and settings.  Then, format the secondary drive and setup the machine with something like Ghost to regularly make an image of the drive for recovery purposes.