External Hard Drives

[redhead]

I need the lowdown on External Hard Drives, Because I am thinking of getting one of these for $15USD
What I whant to know is how do thay work?
How do I control what in on my Internal Hard Drive and what is on my External Hard Drive?
Could I plug it into my moms laptop when we go on trips and I want all my Videos, Projects, Programs ect. with me?
Genral knowlge about External Harddrives.

I am runing widows xp.

Thanks a millon,
Redhead

[Jerrick]

most of the ones i see use a usb connection or another type to plug into your machine, umm when you plug it in your gonna see you internal drive and you external one in you 'my computer' so you can still easily manage files from each hardrives, and yes, you should be able to plug it into your moms laptop and lug around your videos, specially if you get one with lots of space, then you can just use that with all your programs installed to that drive and all your pictures and videos, then just use them on anyone else comp =) hope i helped

[redhead]

Thanks, Is it eazy to transfer old flies onto it?

[Jerrick]

very easily, just right click on the picture or video you wanna get, select cut, go into the other drive, and click paste, done! but if you want to move a program, your gonna want to move all the files needed cause if you just move the shortcut into the other drive and try to use it on another comp, then the shortcut will be wanting to acces where the program was originally installed, and it wont work, so it be easier just to reinstall the programs on the other drive, kinda like a backup too =p

[redhead]

my local disk(:C) say it has a totle of 36 GB, is that correct when the external harddrive would have 400Gb and an Ipod Video has 60 Gb?

[Jerrick]

yep, thats correct, like my hard drives, yours are probably more older, but now with technology today we can get hardrives that can hold 1000gig and more, so its perfect that your hardrives are smaller compared to your external drive, or your ipod lol

[john_childs]

When you plug it in you'll get another drive letter like E or F. You access the drive like any other. You can drag your video and music files to the new drive.

External hard drives are generally used as data drives for data files (like video files, music files, pictures, word processing documents, etc.). You could install a program on it like Adobe Photoshop. But when you plug the drive in another computer, like your mom's, Photoshop will not automatically install or be available on your mom's computer. You need to install programs on each computer that they're used on. It is much easier to just stick with putting data files on an external drive and not trying to install a program to the external drive.

The drive that you linked to is just an enclosure. It's only the outer box with USB and Firewire ports. It does not include a hard drive inside. You need to buy the hard drive separately and install it in the enclosure.

[ntappin]

When it is plugged in you can interact with it as if it were a normal folder. Anything you can do to a folder you can do to a hard drive. The only problem is that because its not directly connected to your computer it may be slower to put things on or take things off of compared with your internal hard drive.

[koebwil]

does anyone else see that that is just a case. I might be stating the obvious, but you need to get a hard drive to go in that case.

[johnfoss]

Yes, Redhead, if you don't already have a hard drive you intend to use, it might be cheaper to just buy a whole external HD unit (like the
Maxtor One Touch II.

I have the first-generation version of this, and it works fine. Mine uses USB or Firewire. The newer ones are supposed to come with better backup software, in case you use them to back up your computer(s).

[andrew_carter]

My brother has had big problems loosing files with his Maxtor 300GB. Obviously that doesn't mean they're any less reliable than others on the market...just a warning though.

Andrew

[john_childs]

Originally Posted by andrew_carter

My brother has had big problems loosing files with his Maxtor 300GB. Obviously that doesn't mean they're any less reliable than others on the market...just a warning though.

Andrew

You do need to be careful that you don't unplug external drives before allowing the operating system to flush the drive cache and close the drive gracefully. Lots of people have a tendency to unplug external drives without first telling the OS to close the drive gracefully. That can lead to corrupted or lost files if data is still in the operating systems disk cache or still in the hardware cache in the drive itself.

So basically you need to be nice and tell the OS that you are about to unplug the drive so the OS can do some house cleanup before you unplug it. Otherwise you can end up with lost data.