Recommend me an External Hard Drive please?

flutterbyuk25

Hey all

I'm not overly tech savvy but my 6 year old laptop is running very slow and is running out of space on the C drive. So I think I need to get an external hard drive to put all my photos and music onto then I can see how I go cleaning up the system to make it run faster. (Please tell me if this is a bad idea!)

So can anyone recommend one? According to laptop I have approx 350MB of pictures (but I think I have more than this!) and 10GB of music.

Do they need to be plugged in the whole time? Or can I just shift everything over to it and then use it when I want to?

I have seen one on Maplin's website for £59.99 which is 1TB. Bit more than I wanted to pay, Tesco have a 1TB for just under £50.

Cheers

x

free4440273

is what I have (one of ) / or u could consider a nas device //

free4440273

such as http://www.netgear.com/stora (i also have ) //

closed

It's a bad idea, if you move data to an external disk, and it fails, you lose the lot, to be safe you should make multiple copies of important data, on the laptop hard disk, on the external hard disk, and on dvd

Moving data has no effect on speed.

To speed up the laptop, read this.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2436849



It's unlikely that you need a 1TB drive, there are far cheaper ones available, staples have a 320GB for 29.99 on offer if you are quick (ends Mon)

you can use this to see why your disk is full

http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/windirstat_portable

free4440273

Do they need to be plugged in the whole time? Or can I just shift everything over to it and then use it when I want to?

^^^^the latter /

closed

3 dvd's should do it, assuming you have a writer?

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Peripherals/cat/Blank-Media/subcat/DVD-Media

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131612

flutterbyuk25

Thanks all for the suggestions

I have copies of most of pics on DVD already, plus on photo storage websites like Flickr.

closed - thanks a lot. I will look at your comprehensive guide in the week and follow the instructions to hopefully get laptop working a bit better. I know there is a some old stuff that can be unistalled. I am middle of some uni work so don't want to tempt fate and lose everything this weekend!!

closed

If you post a hijackthis log, installed ram, and commit charge in the meantime, we could probably tell you what to uninstall to speed it up

Some laptops, acer etc have another partition, D, often left empty/unused, how big is your disk?