adding an external hd to a laptop

[Tiggeroo]

I want to put an external hd on my laptop. The prices are very good. It's an older laptop. Are there any limits to what I can put on it? Do I have to limit the speed or size of the hd I had on?

 

[Carl]

Well, one limit is whether you have the correct ports available - such as firewire or USB. Then the speed of the port has to be considered. There is USB and USB2 and Firewire 400 and Firewire 800.

 

[Servants of Evan]

If it's an older laptop, odds are good isn't usb 2. Transfer speeds for large files aren't going to be blazing, but it'll work. What's your operating system? W2000, (98?) ???

 

[Tiggeroo]

I have two usb ports. Is that the same as having a usb2 port? I have a pentium lll mobile cpu 1000mhz. I don't know what all that means though. It's a nice laptop but only 10gig hd that's mostly full, mainly with all the basic programs.

 

[Tiggeroo]

OS xp professional

 

[GoofyDad869]

I have two usb ports. Is that the same as having a usb2 port?

Nope. USB 2.0 is a more recent USB standard which allows for higher speed transfer. Neither of our laptops have USB 2.0 ports and each only has two USB ports. KAMommy's has a 30GB hard drive, and mine has a 20GB hard drive.

We have a multiport adapter for each laptop (an adapter that has 4 USB receptacles which plug into one of your computer's USB ports) to plug printers & mice into. The USB multiport adapters are about $25 or $30 at any office supply store or technology store and are very useful, in my experience.

We have a 100GB USB Maxtor hard drive that usually bounces between the laptops (right now it's at my office). It's not blazingly fast but it gets the job done for us. We use it for storing music (about 25GB worth) and our family pictures (about 20GB worth).

 

[Tiggeroo]

so i can just pick up any external hd although it may not run too quickly with my laptop? I can set it up as a second hd where I send things to that are overflow? The main reason I want it is for music.

 

[Servants of Evan]

Yep. It should work just fine. The only cautions I have for external hard drives are: Beware, they can get a bit hot. There's no fan cooling them and the case is usually designed to "wick" the heat away from the drive itself. Allow them to "breathe" to maintain cooling. Secondly, be careful with what you purchase. I shop via NewEgg.com and read the customer comments. Western Digital -- the maker of drives which I have had very good luck with in my own PCs makes an external hard drive. Unfortunately virtually every review notes a significantly loose power cord -- the sort you may have to "jiggle" to get to work. Right there, that took them out of the runnning for me.