External hard drive

Ok, my 6 or 7yr old PC with only 60GB of space has run out nearly.

First question is, would it be best to dump it and buy a new one??

If not could I buy an external hard drive of around 500GB and prolong the life of my PC?

I'm not into too much technical stuff, I just want something that works.

I'm still using windows XP:o

Not really wanting to part with lots of cash, but at the same time dont want to buy something that's likely to be just a short term stop gap.

 

I think another hard disk, external or internal, would just be a stop gap to be honest.

If it came with a 60gb hard disk, I would hazard a guess that the RAM is only about 512MB or 1GB at most. It just means that increasingly, you'll find newer software either runs slow, or wont run at all. Even just using the internet nowadays with modern websites puts a lot more load on a PC than used to be the case.

But in answer to your main question, yes you could put an external hard disk on there. It might be slow (depending on if your machine has USB1 or USB2 - could be either around the time your machine was built). If its USB1, access to the external disk will be very noticeably slow. If its USB2 it will be faster, probably acceptable speed, but still noticeably slower than your built in drive.

 

Thanks clueless.

I did put some more RAM in a few years ago, its about 1.5 GB now.

I think I have USB 2, but not sure.

 

1.5gb is a bit low by modern standards, but it should be enough on an XP machine.

I guess it depends on what you do with the machine. If its mostly the internet and a bit of office stuff, it should fine for a while yet. If you do lots of graphics stuff it is going to struggle.

 

Well As you can guess, its taken me 6yrs to fill up 60GB, so I'm not using a lot of space, but I get your point regarding RAM.

Its a bit slow on start up these days, but I put that down to all kinds of rubbish building up, rightly or wrongly.

 

There is a lot to be said for having an external hard drive. I have one on my XP machine. It will expand your hard disk capacity, but just as important it can act as a back up.

If you have key files, such as pictures, that you really don't want to lose you can put copies, quite quickly, onto your external hard drive. You could also shuffle your less used files onto the external hard disk, freeing up space on your quicker main disk.

If your computer were to fail - and they can - you will have backup copies of your key files. And if you were to buy a new machine, you can just transfer the external disk complete with your files to the new machine.

 

my old dinasaur conked out a few weeks ago (blue screen) .... would not do a safe boot .... my son managed to recover my important files ... he added my harddrive to his machine as a D drive and copied the main info

so, ended up buying an older Toshiba satellite laptop .... £45 is what I paid .... works like a dream ... (my son was horrified, as he studied IT at college and says I bought junk) .... but is fast enough for me (for now)

what I now also do, is email all the important files such as databases, photos etc to my hotmail account and keep them there as a backup .... uses no space on my harddrive and I know they are safely backed up

database file extension names have to be changed though (I have some microsoft access databases)

 

Good point. In that case I'd say an external hard disk is probably a logical option. JWK and PeterS make good points too about backups and shuffling files about.

The slowdown on startup is most likely due to stuff building up as you say. If you can get rid of any files you definitely don't need, and back up everything else to an external disk, just keeping system files (the whole of Windows), program files, and any regularly accessed files on the internal disk, it will speed things up no end.

Also worth clearing out all the masses of log files that grow over time. Do you use any third party anti-virus and firewall software? Some of them although great, do build up a lot of log clutter that slows things down.

 

That should be more then enough to do some light browsing email etc. I doubt Pete is going to be doing anything whichb is going to require much more

I'd firstly find out what's using up all the space on your hard drive Pete and if it's all important/wanted then go grab yourself an external hard drive, I picked a 120gb 2.5" external hard drive for £22 in the sales a few months back so you should be alright

I also highly recommend CCleaner by Piriform which does a whole host of tasks from removing temporary junk files from your pc to stopping programs running in the background slowing down your PC. it's completely FREE for home use so don't go buying it

 

Right, thanks for all the advice.
I'll take a day or two to make up my mind what is the best way to go.

I'll give that cleaner a go Aesculus.
I'm alwas wary of any downloads that delete stuff, but I'll have a look.

 

You should be pretty safe with CCleaner Pete just make sure to read it through before you commit to doing anything your not sure on

 

thanks Aesculus ... I have downloaded the CCleaner and have run it .... works like a dream!

 

Pete I would go with what the others have said above . I use an external USB harddrive as a backup , they are very cheap these days and you just plug them into a USB and thats it! As JWK said never let your hard drive get more than 75% full , as this can cause problems. I also use XP , I think its the best windows version made although don't know much about Windows 7. Probably if you move all your photos over to the external this will save oodles of space.

For semi automated backup, I use this program - its free in manual mode.
Second Backup Free Edition - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

For cleaning my system I also use CC Cleaner and this one below . They don't seem to be invasive. Just run them once every 3 months or so.
Advanced SystemCare Free - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

 

One other thing that hasn't been mentioned Pete.
I wouldn't rush to go away from XP.

I've been running Windows7 for a year and still find parts of it a pain. Several times I have been tempted to go back to XP, which I find much more user friendly, but have bottled it as the Laptop is still under Warranty and W7 was supplied.