I need some space... well my dad actually...

[Noel Johnson]

Hi all,

Can any of you fine fellows shed some light on a problem my Dad's having? He needs some more space on his computer. What is the easiest way of doing this? It'll be me doing the installation but I don't know much about these things...

The way I see it is:

1. Additional internal hard drive. Now I've added video cards and stuff before but never a drive (of any kind) is this difficult? what do I need to look out for?

2. Additional external drive. Do these exist and are they any good?

Cheers all,

N.

[Mr T.]

Get an external hard drive mate. Cheap from PC World type gaff.

[JAG]

Got an 80gb usb plug n pray Freecom External Hard Drive from PC World about 4 weeks ago for £59.99. Works perfectly well, quick access times. Use it mainly for backups of my MP3's and photos and data.

[Dundee]

INternal hard drives are cheapest and are basically a piece of piss to install. You can get 120Gb (7200rpm)for about £70 or less from Dabs.com. If your motherboard supports SATI then you can have a very fast drive with over 200gb of storage. The external drives should be firewire, USB is too slow, They are more expensive cos of the dedicated power supply in them.

If you have "windaes twa thoosand" or XP then the drives are automatically recognised when you reboot, you just use a utility to format the drive then Bobs yer whatsname.

Good luck

C

[Noel Johnson]

Thanks chaps, My dad's ordered a internal one, so be prepared for a "Why doesn't this work" type question soon.

[Narked@50]

Originally Posted by Dundee

The external drives should be firewire, USB is too slow C

Most are now USB 2, (as opposed to 1) which is actualy quicker and more versatile than Firewire which is now rapidly falling out of fashion with newer technology.

Or so I've heard??

James

[Scuby]

Originally Posted by Narked@50

Most are now USB 2, (as opposed to 1) which is actualy quicker and more versatile than Firewire which is now rapidly falling out of fashion with newer technology.

Depends on the application. USB works better for occasional (fast) data, where as firewire is generally better for sustained transfers (as you'd get in mass storage devices).
Although firewire is slower on paper, i've got an external USB2/Firewire combo case with a fast hard drive in, and it is significantly faster using firewire than USB - its to do with the way it sends the data, less overhead on firewire.

In reality, the differences are pretty much academic - although I know my drive is faster on firewire, I only know that because I tried a benchmark on it. Otherwise i'd never have known.

The biggest thing that puts me off USB2 is their marketing. Not a particularly good reason you might think, but they really are out to con people with in in my very honest opinion. My dad bought a USB scanner late last year, marked "USB 2" in big writing on the front of the box! Great eh, nice fast transfer from the scanner! Well, no! In small writing underneath it says USB 2 Full-Speed! Again, seems about right, if it's full speed then there's nothing to worry about there is there? You'd think not! It later emerges, after some digging, that Full Speed isn't "full" at all, and in fact is basically USB1 renamed (which I can only assume is for the purposes of deception!). You need Hi-Speed USB to be fast!

David

[dry suit diver]

firewire for sony digital video camera to laptop beats usb to desktop or usb to laptop and the desktop has better specs than laptop (both vaio too) not tried firewire on desktop yet.

i am being assimilated by sony do they make dive puters?