External hard drives

jules01

Hello

I was thinking of an external hard drive as my existing hard drive is nearly full - My question is...if i add an external hard drive - Can i transfer my existing items on my internal hard drive to my external hard drive without to many problems?

Thanks

Jules01

movieman

That depends. Windows programs usually don't like to be moved, so you'd probably have to uninstall them and reinstall them. Windows doesn't like the 'My Documents' folder being anywhere other than the C: drive, so that's tricky to move too.

Other files shouldn't be a problem.

jules01

Well there mainly videos,songs and photos - Am i not able to cut and paste them for instance or is it not as simple as that?

s-j-cooper_2

jules01 wrote:

Well there mainly videos,songs and photos - Am i not able to cut and paste them for instance or is it not as simple as that?

Yes, you can just drag them across and they will copy and paste automatically - it acts in the same way as a floppy drive or a usb drive.

jules01

Ok thanks for that guys!I may as well go for it then!

albertross_2

If these files are important, I wouldn't rely on any one single hard disk to keep them on, backup the important stuff to DVD.

Willow147

movieman wrote:

Windows doesn't like the 'My Documents' folder being anywhere other than the C: drive, so that's tricky to move too..

In Windows XP, moving the location is actually very easy. I have done this on numerous machines (putting 'My Documents' onto my 'D' drive) and not had any problems.

Right click on 'My Documents' and choose 'properties'. You can now choose the location for 'My Documents'.

horsenailbucket

Nothing is impossible but here's the general rules...

Data (such as documents, images, video or music) is very easy to move off onto an external hard disk.

Programmes are medium hard.

Operating systems are quite hard.

payless

If its just space ( rather than portability) then a replacement larger hard drive ( use a ghost type program like.. ghost or Acronis true image to swap over ) , or an internal slave HD might be cheaper