Portable Hard Drive versus Extrernal Hard Drive

[annie0000]

What, if any, is the difference between the two? Sorry if that sounds a bit thick, but I want to wipe and reinstall my OS etc on my PC as a result of some errors in the start up caused by a virus. Before I do that, I want to save all my music and photos etc onto an external drive so that I can load them back on later. My PC is now virus free and I am running Kaspersky, but I can only get the PC to work in SafeMode, it just blue screens during normal start up.

I dont want to buy the wrong thing, I am thinking of an external hard drive as I don't need it to be prtable, but not sure if it is as simple as that.

Any help would be appreciated.

[VHG]

Hard drives come in two sizes. 2.5 inch go inside laptops and 3.5 inch go inside desktops.

But they also make external hard drives in these two sizes as well.

A 2.5 inch external hard drive (the cases are smaller of course) do NOT need to be plugged into the mains, they get their power from the USB drive, so in that sense are portable.

A 3.5 inch external hard drive (the cases are larger of course) DO need mains power so in that sense are NOT portable (they need to be near a power supply).

As a general rule 3.5 inch external hard drives can be larger (in storage size) and nowadays are usually 500Mb or 1Tb (1,000Mb) or more.

External hard drives at 2.5 inch are usually 250Gb or so, but I think they go up to 500Gb.

3.5 inch external hard drives are usually cheaper, per gigabyte, than 2.5 inch external hard drives.

If you plan to use it at home mostly go for a 3.5 inch drive.

[VHG]

Here is a picture of a 2.5 inch external hard drive. Note they are highlighting the portable nature of the drive

http://www.hardwaresp...-320gb-hard-drive.jpg

[annie0000]

Cheers VHG - I can now make up my shopping list - My current PC only has 160mb at the moment so I don't need anything too big. Am I right in thinking, that I could permanantly store stuff on that drive and link it to my PC and increase the memory? Would that increase the speed of my PC?

[MarkRae]

Firstly, storage devices like internal, external or portable hard drives have nothing to do with memory.

So, to answer your question, you could leave a portable hard drive permanently connected to your PC, and that would give you more hard disk space.

It would not, however, increase your computer's memory. You may or may not be able to increase that depending on what is already installed, but not with a portable hard drive...

[annie0000]

Thanks Mark, so what it would give me is more storage so I could keep my music etc on the external drive and just link to that to listen to it but it wouldn't have any affect on the speed of the PC. That's okay really. It's just our family PC and is not used for anything fancy.

[Old_Geezer]

External memory (secondary storage) is not something I've seen for the PC, although I'd be surprised if t didn't exist. If you need more memory then the usual course of action is to add to, or replace, the memory cards in your PC. It's not a difficult job, but if wary about opening up your PC then it ought not cost too much to get the shop to do it for you.

[Old_Geezer]

However if you want somewhere to store your fiiles it isn't memory you are looking for, it is disk storage. Just add any drive you fancy that plugs into your PC and I suspect it'll prove just fine.

[Old_Geezer]

If I were you I'd sort out the blue screen/safe mode problem first.

[VHG]

>nowadays are usually 500Mb or 1Tb (1,000Mb) or more

Typo, it should be

nowadays are usually 500Gb or 1Tb (1,000Gb) or more

[MarkRae]

Mb = megabits
MB = megabytes

Hard drives are measured in MB or TB these days...

[annie0000]

Thanks all. ;o)

Old geezer - that's why I need the external drive - I want to save all my music and photos of the Pc before I clear it and reload my disks just in case I lose everything. Hopefully that will sort out my blue screen problem - seems to be errors in the start up caused by the virus I had.

[society]

" you could leave a portable hard drive permanently connected to your PC, and that would give you more hard disk space. "

Would this affect the computer whenever it's re-booted? Occasionally I've left the external drive plugged in and a warning message came up, and the computer wouldn't do anything until I'd unplugged the external drive.

[Old_Geezer]

There is a boot up (CMOS settings) menu for your PC that dictates which drives it tries to boot from, and in what order. The intial screen usually gives details on how to reach it. Holding down Del during boot up being a favourite. It is possible that your PC was set to try to boot from your external drive first, so it failed.

But as with all PCs it could be something more obscure.

[MarkRae]

Society, difficult to answer your question because you mentioned that you sometimes "get a warning message", but didn't actually say what that warning message was!!!

Even if your computer's BIOS was configured to include external drives in its boot-up priority, it would not try to boot from a portable drive unless that portable drive had a bootable operating system installed on it...

[society]

Thanks OldGeezer and MarkRae for addressing my question.

Mark, I don't remember the entire message, it was a very long one. The first line was something like “checking the G drive for errors", and a lot of technical terms and numbers too much to remember.

And MarkRae, I humbly apologise for calling you an idiot the other night, I am deeply sorry.

Caroline

[chil]

I have a external hard drive and that has now failed and I cant get anything from it, so please don't soley rely on it for important stuff.