External Hard Drive?

Question

My laptop has limited space on the hdd because I only got a 40GB hard drive and Dell took a lot of space. I was thinking of getting a external Western Digital Drive for games, pictures, etc. Should I just get an external drive or go for an internal one? Its for Christmas.

Answer 1

Personally, I would get a larger internal drive. Try to avoid a 4200 RPM drive. Get a 5400 RPM drive, or better yet, a 7200 RPM drive. Not all drives are the same thickness. The general standard is 9.5mm. Check your drive before buying anything. You drive could be either IDE or SATA. You'll need to know which before buying a new one. In the desktop 3.5 inch world, there are adaptors, but not for laptop internal drives. There's no room.

In the past, I've used 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch IDE adaptors to put both the new and old drives into a desktop machine. Then I used PartitionMagic to transfer everything and re-size the partition.

If its no big deal for you, you can just put the new blank drive in the machine and restore the system using the disk that comes with the machine.

Get an external enclosure for the old drive and keep it around. They come in handy.

Answer 2

Many internal drives are slower on laptops- 4200 RPM. If that is the case get a new bigger, faster drive. If your internal drive is already a 7200 RPM model, then just go with an external drive as it will be SO much easier than reformatting and reinstalling the OS and all the programs. This assumes that you have a 1394 or USB2 port available. If you have limited USB2 ports available and are using other USB devices you may need a USB hub, but some hubs do not like to play nice with hard drives or other demanding data streams.

Answer 3

To have an external HDD defeat the purpose of a laptop. You can't carry an external hardrive around with you. All you need to do is replace the 40GB hardrive in your laptop with a higher capacity hardrive (100GB or more). All laptop hardrive are the same size. Most hardrive will includes a software that clone your old hardrive to the new hardrive.

Answer 4

Hey Ron,
In my personal experience, you wouldn't really notice a difference as to speed etc. Of course be on the lookout for a USB 2.0 external HDD (if your laptop supports it) as any of these additional features only mean good things. Plus external HDD's are fantastic if your on the run doing things, and if you have a I.T. career, they can be a god send from moving from home to work.

Hopefully this has helped :)

Answer 5

Ebay has some good prices on external hard drives. A friend of mine bought one from there for $100. It has 250 gigabyte of storage. Great deal.

Answer 6

It would be a lot easier just to clean up your computer. Dell and every other manufacturer sells them loaded with junk nobody needs.
Also, try turning off system restore. That turkey will consume a hard drive.

Answer 7

i strongly doubt you can fit another internal one on your laptop without alot of money and general irritation all around. I suggest u get an external USB one, they are cheap and reliable and have the benifit of acting like a giant pen drive to move all ur important stuff around different computers!

Answer 8

You can try. I can give you a link that deals with hard drive problems. Some drive problems can be easily fixed by yourself using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful. Try this site, if you can get what is required.

Answer 9

como estoy apasionada del mundo de los ordenadores me gusta hacer mi propia configuración de ordenador, como todos las otras componentes los he comprado de sitios web y han sido excelentes, el hard disk también lo compre aquí, el hard disk es exactamente como esperaba, muy buena compra.