External Hard drive help
 

Looking for some help from some of you computer experts. :)

Looking for an external hard drive as my PC only has 20gb and that is pretty much used up.

the main use would be for music and photos, but I'm sure it would be useful in other ways too....

Anyway, my dad got one from here... http://www.storagedepot.co.uk a little while ago and he recommended them. Has anyone used them and if so, would you recommend their products??

I have firewire capabilities which I I am assuming would be preferable to USB. But is there anything I should look out for or look to get? I dont really want to spend much over £100 really (under if possible) and the website I mention above has a few options in my budget.

Any help would be most welcome,

Cheers

John


edit: forgot to ask.....on the website above they have 'moblie' hard drives and 'desktop' hard drives. The differences are aparently that the 'mobile' ones are smaller, lighter and powered from the PC, wheres the 'desktop' ones are heavier, bit bigger and powered via the mains. From my point of view the desktop one would suit me - I wont be removing it from my PC, plus I would rather spend the extra on the specs rather than the physical size of the thing. But would there be any issues, problems or things that I should be aware of with regard to the two different ways of powering them?

Lacie products are very good quality & run USB or Firewire. http://www.lacie.com/uk/But why not consider just replacing your current internal hard drive with a new one? You could either reinstall from scratch, or use something like Norton Ghost to copy the old hard drive contents to the new one.

have a look at http://www.pcnextday.co.uk/product_d...ENC&pgroup=CAS

the "mobile" hdd enclosure will use a 2.5inch hdd. you dont need external power as it will get it via the usb port. "desktop" hdd enclosure will use a 3.5inch hdd and you will need mains power.

HTH

Am I missing something here? Could you not replace the 20gig with a much bigger one?

that would be too easy ;)

Cheers for the replies guys. :)

I did consider replacing the internal one but would rather not. I dont really want to start from scratch. I know I could just copy the stuff across but I think I have heard some horror stories with doing that and XP, no?

Besides I also want the ability to back up my main hard drive onto the new external one.

Plus, a new pc is on the cards when funds allow and I will be wanting to use the external hard drive for video editing then.


Cheers for the help

John

John,

i bought a couple of external USB hard drive carriers and a couple of laptop hard drives. Use them to transfer big files between systems.
You may wan't to consider looking at those.
I have a 30Gb drive in one and a 12Gb in the other.

I believe you can get the dual USB/Firewire ones now.

Iain