External hard drives

G

Gary007

Joined
May 17, 2002
Messages
1,452
my hard drive is filling up fast.... how many of you have external hard drives? Does anybody know if you can run programs from external hard drives, or are they mostly a place to store files?
 
Yes, you can run programs from external hard drives, and if it's USB2 or FireWire, you hsouldn't lose anything in the way of speed.
 
I have a Buffalo Network 160GB that I simply connected to my network. I use it as a file server, but it should work fine as an application server if I want it to.
 
I added a bigHD to my router machine so it serves as a file server as well (NAS = "network attached storage"). There is no reason for it not to work as an application server, except that it's slower than the local hard drive and that i have no need to host applications elsewhere.

So answers to your questions would be "Me too","Yes." and "Of course not, if you use fast enough an interface or have strong nerves". 100/1000 mbit ethernet, USB 2.0, Firewire and the newer SCSI revisions are all very fast, each suited to its own specific purpose but all suited well for external data/app storage.
 
Is there any reason you don't want to go with an internal HD? They offer slight performance boosts over an external drive, depending on how the drive is setup anyway.

You shouldn't have nay problems running programs from it though.
 
It is certainly cheap enough now to roll your own external HD by buying an enclosure and plopping whatever HD you want into it.

You can usually save a little money unless you need the extra features/automated software backup that some of the externals provide. Or you can use the money you save to get a bigger HD.

This piece of advice may be a bit dated, but I usually try not to run programs off the external HD, some software just doesn't install well if it isn't run off the C: , even if it is just a partition on the same disk. Also, if you swap things around a lot or connect other devices you run the risk that your HD will have the letter assigned to it changed, that can cause problems as well. This wouldn't be the case with an internal drive or configured network drive.

some links for stand alone apps:

Stand Alone

Portable Freeware
 
well, not sure how to install it, i know, probably a lame and lazy excuse. I'm guessing I would pop out my D: drive and pop in the new one? New territory for me. Maybe I should look into this further.

ErikD said:
Is there any reason you don't want to go with an internal HD? They offer slight performance boosts over an external drive, depending on how the drive is setup anyway.

You shouldn't have nay problems running programs from it though.
Click to expand...
 
If you have a desktop go with internal drives, I have 3 hard drives, 2 cd drives and a LS-120 superdisk drive in my desktop while my laptop which I use most of the time I have an external drive.
 
Would a dvd burner be an option? 4.7 gigs on media that is fairly cheap sounds like a good way to go.
 
Unless you really need the drive to be portable, I would just get another internal drive. I'm not sure how much storage you need, but here's a 160 GB drive for $90. :eek: You can't beat a deal like that unless it's free. Setting up a hard drive is a piece of cake, they include detailed instructions in the box. All you have to do is connect the power and input cables, then configure the drive in Windows (assuming you're running Windows). Good luck.
 
external hard drives are cheap now. if you have a relatively new computer it'll have a bios that can boot up from usb devices. you can even install games and even an OS on the hard drive.
 
Installing an internal drive is a piece of cake. A couple of mounting screws or brackets, depending on your case, plug in the power cable and IDE cable, both are keyed to go in only the right way.

Depending on what drives are already in your computer you might not even need to take anything out, unless one is failing. On most but the very cheapest computers you can have up to four IDE drives. So if you already have two HD's and only one CD or DVD drive you can just add another HD to the setup.

As mentioned instructions come with most every HD. The only exception would be if you buy and OEM drive which saves you some money, but doesn't come with any instructions.
 
I just bought a LaCie 250GB external HD for storage. This freed up my 30GB C: drive for programs only. Now I'm back at only 50% usage. Nice.

I used USB-2 and bought a USB-2 card with it. All for LESS than $200 delivered. This HD can go with me anywhere and was simple to install and recognize. I did format it to NTFS instead of Fat32 for Win XP and Win 2000.

Coop
 
Windows XP makes it particularly easy to install and partition a new drive. My case doesn't even have any screws, just spring clips. A new drive will usually come with detailed instructions, or they'll be online at the manufacturer's website.
 
I just bought an iPod Photo with 60 Gigs of storage. I not only have all my mp3's and photos (over 5000), but also backups of all my critical sub directories off of my laptop. Using it for external backup/storage is the thing that really swung me to the decision to buy it, though I'd been thinking about it for a while.
 
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