ChatterBank2 mins ago
External hard drives
I have added an external hard drive to my pc. , Can i free up space on my internal hard drive by transferring files to the external, ie music held on windows media player, my pictures etc, or would i just be duplicating the same info that would use up space on both drives. or can i only save new files ,music etc to the external drive.
i am using windows xp.
i have probably not explained myself very well, if not, feel free to ridicule me.
thanks
ged
Answers
No best answer has yet been selected by gedk. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.If your external drive has a large capacity, much larger than your internal drive, then you could partition it (with something like PartitionMagic):
- one partition for backups
- one partition for extra storage
Use the first to backup your entire internal hard drive with something like Norton Ghost (your external drive may have come with its own software for this purpose).
The use the second partition to store anything you like; pictures, music, anything!
if you "drag and drop" files from a drive to the other, the system will duplicate them.
To avoid that, there are 2 ways:
Drag and drop while holding down a shift key
or
"cut" your files and "paste" them on the destination.
cut and paste are available when you click on a folder or a file with the right mouse button