i need some advices to buy a new hard drive?

KSAGirl

I want to buy a new external hard drive , around 350 to 500 GB , but i don't know what is the best hard drive !!
cause i have lots of movies and i want them to be save in a hard drive for ever ! is it possible ? or i can lose data ?

Answer
I just received my copy of the January issue of PC World Magazine and it has a review article on external hard drives, the article's title is "The Wide World of External Drives." Its a great article reviewing 10 top notched drives divided in to 2 catagories, portable and desktop external hard drive. You are probably best off with a desktop external hard drive since you just want to backup your movies. The more compact and portable a drive is the most expensive it becomes. Personally, my preference is for Western Digital and Maxtor. I have both products and they are extremely reliable. Please read the article for all the reviews:

"The Wide World of External Drives: Today's options provide impressive combinations of speed, interfaces, features, and software." -- written by Narasu Rebbapragada (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127545/article.html#)

It is a shame that Black Friday has come and gone. The day after Thanksgiving is called "Black Friday" and it is the number one shopping day of the year. Stores slash prices hoping to attract customers. Best Buy was selling a Western Digital 250GB external hard drive for $59.99 (no rebates). If you can hold off buying the hard drive until Christmas, you can save a lot of money because stores like Best Buy or Circuit City will have holiday specials on computers and accessories.

Installing a portable hard drive to more than one computer?

Q. I recently got my first portable hard drive, a WD Elements. My friends said that they didnt even have to install there hard drives, they just plugged it in and it would work like a normal USB so that is what I expected. Except for mine, I realised I had to install it. So I partitioned it and everything for my Macbook by using support.wdc.com, but what happens if i wnat to drag files onto my hard drive from another computer? I have a PC desk top and I want to drag some movies from it onto my hard drive. I tried installing it onto the PC as well, but it wouldn't work... any help?

Answer
I'm not totally sure about this but it is more advisable to format the drive under Windows using FAT32 (not NTFS) as it would be recognized by both PC and Mac. As far as I know, PCs do not recognize anything outside the world of Microsoft. Macs (and Linux boxes) are more adaptive. If your Mac fails to recognize the drive automatically, you can try forcing it manually. Under Linux that would mean typing "mount -t msdos /dev/sd-something /tosomewhere". I'm not familiar with the Mac although I know it's distantly related to Linux nowadays.

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I want to move my itunes music library off of my computers hard drive?Can I use a flash drive?

pc world portable hard drive image

MJMGrand

I run windows vista and the itunes files are slowing down my computer, I didnt have a problem until I added all the music. Can I use a flash drive, if not what type of drive do I need?

I am pretty sure its the music files, I've got a pretty cheap laptop, so it doesnt have a ton of space anyway and it doesnt have all the bells and whistles.

Answer
I had the same problem. You can upgrade your laptop, which is a good idea anyway. Add more RAM, it makes a world of difference. Anyways, get yourself a portable hard drive, depending on how much music your got. I got myself a 1TB hard drive, but I throw movies on there too. It's not too expensive, cost me about $100. Throw your music on there if you'd like, but the problem you run into is with the ITunes app. It's kinda a pain in the ass but it will speed up your PC.

Can I install a game in an external hard drive and play it?

John P

Hi! I just want to ask, since my pc has 6 gb only, I was wondering if I can buy an external hard drive and install my game there and play from the external hard drive? Thank you!

Answer
Short Answer: Yes, with a few rare exceptions and one caveat (condition). But, it may not perform as well as you'd like.

Long answer: Most games can be installed on and run from an external hard drive. The exception is when a particular game does not allow you to designate your own installation path. I will say that I have only encountered this once before, so it's quite rare, but still within the realm of possibility.

Now for the caveat:
Since software installation varies depending upon the installed hardware, you will only be able to play the games on that computer. Even though your hard drive is portable, your games are not. Since this solution is intended merely as a means of adding additional storage space, this probably doesn't concern you that much.

And finally the bitter pill:
Game performance will suffer. How much? Hard to say, but think of it this way: A USB 2.0 connection tops out with a transfer rate of 480 mega bits per second (mbp/s). Fast as that may seem when you're offloading pictures from your camera, it just can't stand-up to the transfer rate of an internal hard drive (anywhere from 1,200 to 2,400 mbp/s). By using an external storage device you effectively create a bottle-neck, you're only as fast as that USB cable, and the rest of your hardware is almost certainly faster than that.

As such, I would urge you to consider installing a second hard drive in your current computer. It doesn't tie you down anymore than the external drive does, and the difference in performance will be considerable. It's not the easiest thing in the world if you haven't done it before, but it's nothing a couple hours of research and a few well phrased questions can't get you through.

Final Notes: Unless you want to play StarCraft (total installation size of 90 MB) off of your external drive an internal second drive would be a far superior choice. The drive itself would need to be mounted inside your computer chassis. One of the open 3.5 inch drive bays would be ideal, but even a 5.25 inch bay can be converted with $10 worth of hardware.

Best of Luck!

Feel free to follow up with another question.

EDIT: Here's a link to an online guide explaining precisely how to install a second hard drive, should you choose that route...

http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/HardDrive1.htm

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