80Gb EXTERNAL hard drive - £49.99

gamma

How hard is it to slap a 2nd hard drive into a PC?

Dead Easy.
Buy a IDE or SATA and put the jumper on the back as Cable select

Open your pc - check where the hard disk is, looks like the new one and somewhere in the front screwed in, cant miss it
follow the ribbon type cable and find a open port on the cable.
Install the new disk under or ontop of the old one and put this spare port in.
Connect the power and boot your pc
press delete to get into the Bios scroll to first option check and see if there are 2 hard disks detected and any cdrom drives else just put everything on auto.

Boot into windows and format the drive by right clicking on the drive and select format

voila

you cant go wrong

Unless there are no spare ports on the cable - then you need a second ide ribbon cable, should come with your motherboard or maybe already in there else £2 from any pc shop (if you chose a IDE hard drive)

easy

wazza

if you have the confidence very easy. it depends what you have in your pc.



simply put you unplug the pc. remove cover. advice you to earth yourself. before going any further make sure there is a power lead and connector with the hard drive or already fitted to the motherboard. screw the drive in using 2 or 4 screw supplied and connect the leads up. try not to touch the components on the motherboard. place cover back on and fire her up. simply follow instructions.

if unsure just go for the external unit listed above. np need to remove cover.

zcaprd7

Cheers - cheaper than messing about with external nonsense I guess?

wazza

Cheers - cheaper than messing about with external nonsense I guess?

with an external drive you simply plug it into usb port and bob's your uncle. it is a matter of convience of simply plugging an external unit vs task of fitting an internal unit

MikeT_3

I guess most of us can fit a 2nd hard drive in the pc, but the benefit of an external drive is that you can grab data from any pc with usb ports and transfer it to another that you maybe dont own and the owner may be a bit reluctant to let you take it apart to shove the drive in.
I use a 2nd hard drive to back up my operating system and data, but it gets boring having to open the case to plug it in and do a mirror of the main drive.
Should be much easier using usb 2 and an external drive which should mean I do it more often and maybe save myself some pain the next time a drive just dies.

scumgrinder

I guess most of us can fit a 2nd hard drive in the pc, but the benefit of an external drive is that you can grab data from any pc with usb ports and transfer it to another that you maybe dont own and the owner may be a bit reluctant to let you take it apart to shove the drive in.
I use a 2nd hard drive to back up my operating system and data, but it gets boring having to open the case to plug it in and do a mirror of the main drive.
Should be much easier using usb 2 and an external drive which should mean I do it more often and maybe save myself some pain the next time a drive just dies.

yep i agree, plus my machine has two internal hdd already.

lellie

I've just bought a 160gb internal drive and 2 drive bay caddies.. one for me and one for my boyfriend.. now I can take out my drive when I want it and take it over to his.. and vice versa..