External hard drive

as others have said if you like XP don't think you need to upgrade as Microsoft would like you to believe, WIndows Vista was a dreadful OS at the best of times and I think Windows 7 is going to become the new XP (in the sense of stability and user ability) but microsft I believe has pledged updates long into 2014 and I doubt veyr much that software vendors are going to stop supporting XP any time soon.

 

A good lot of advice, thanks everyone.
Well I now have another question.

I'm thinking of going down the external hard drive route.

Would it be best to hang on, and wait till after Christmas?

Or do the prices of these kind of things remain fairly constant.

 

Prices are very unlikely to go UP Pete and as with all computer technology, in the long term the price will fall. If you are not in a great hurry I'd be tempted to hang on and see if any of the big high street shops has a sale before or just after Christmas. I Don't think you'll save a fortune as 500 gig external drives are currently about £60.

 

When you make your enquiry try to include a Caddy. It's a neater package than the free-standing system and much more portable.

 

You could always buy an internal hard drive and plug it in, several clips on you tube showing you how. But yes, an external one is even easier.

I have to agree with moving the important stuff over, such as pictures, as they take up a lot of space, and when the computer dies, you still have them, or if you are really sad, you can take the external disc to a friends, plug it in, and show them your pictures.

I have xp and an external drive that I copy stuff to (when I remember)

 

Sorry, dont play golf gc.

Explain please

 

I believe gcc3663 is referring to the fact that you can purchase internal PC drives and then install them into an external enclosure for use via USB.

One thing to bear in mind is that if a drive is described as a 3.5" external hard drive then it will usually need to be plugged into a wall socket for extra power unlike 2.5" which can draw enough power from the single USB port (as long as it's USB 2.0 otherwise it will require 2 USB Ports) as well as one being bigger than the other

 

Good response Aesculus.
I got the impression Pete was thinking of a Laptop.

That being the case the 2.5" HD, supplied in a Caddy, is less problematic than buying seperately and fixing together at home.

As you say if a PC is the aim then the 3.5" HD with external power would be required.

Thanks for clarifying.

 

The vertical metal lump is an internal hard drive.
The black box thing is some where to plug it into so your computer can read it.


or may be he meant



This mounts in the front of your pc, and lets you take the hard drive out

 

OK.
I think I get the message, I dont spend much time looking at this kind of stuff, so what is available is a bit beyond me.

But I'm getting there

 

Computer gear is a bit like commodities, in that the prices fluctuate based on all sorts of factors, but on average the prices do go down steadily.

I had a quick look at a supplier I've used before. I found this:

Affordable 1tb External Hard Drives, USB Hard Drives | Ebuyer.com

To be honest, although it makes a lot of sense to get an internal one, and it is very easy to fit one, I wouldn't advise someone to do that unless they were comfortable with some of the terminology.

Over the years the standards have changed several times. A 6 year old machine could be using SATA or IDE. Unless you know which, you could end up buying an incompatible drive. You wont have that problem with an external drive because it will just connect via USB.

 

I've found one that says its USB3, how do I find out what USB I have:o

 

Most likely you'll have USB 2. Its not a problem though. A USB 3 device will work with USB 2 (or USB 1). The standard is designed to be backward compatible, so you can mix and match USB versions without problems, ie if your machine had USB 3, it would happily work with a USB 1 or 2 device too.

All it means is that the speed of data transfer will be limited to the lowest version between the two, so if your machine is USB 2, and you plug in the USB 3 hard disk, you'll only get USB 2 transfer speed. Again, not really a problem, USB 2 is fast enough for most uses.