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L391Flag for United States of America

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External HardDrive vs. Internal HardDrive

Morning Experts,
Looking to purchase another drive to back my Windows XP Home system using "Drive Image 7" and need to know which drive would be more beneficially better to use in case of the main drive C:/ ever does fail to the point of the "Black screen of Death".
If external is the way to go would you recommend USB 1.1 /2.0 or actually hardwired?
My system is based upon:
*AMD Mobile Duron 4 Processor w/ 1650mhz
*512MG Ram
*Maxtor 30GB 7200rpm Hard Drive / ATA133
Looking for a capacity of around 10-40GB on the new drive.
Would be much appreciated if you could provide a link to purchase the recomended drive.
Thanks Much Once Again,
L391
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KJHDI12

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KJHDI12


Actualy, duallayer dvd+ has 8gb space, however they are still too expensive and dosnt come in the RW (rewriteable) variant that you can use over and over, but its nice to have this technology awailable as soon as the price of the blank duallayer rewriteables goes down.
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Thanks much for the input that I have recieved on this topic.
I would like to go a little further in detail on what I'm trying to accomplish.
First of all "Drive Image7" is a program that backs up your total system even the OS in my case Windows Xp Home version.
To do this I have to install a Hard Drive either External or Internal. So if my primary Hard Drive goes bad I can always use the(new)secondary and switch it to now the master and take of running once again.
One of my main concerns is that I do not want to jeopardize my performance, that is why I'm wondering which style of Hard Drive to use ie: Internal-External-USB-Hardwired etc. This new Hard Drive will only be used to keep a master copy of my Primary Hard Drive which I'm currently using, which is only consuming about 4.80GB
Thanks,
L391
"do not want to jeopardize my performance"

Installing a new hard drive isn't going to jeopardize your performance, it can only improve it.

By the way, I forgot to ask you if you had price range for the hard drive, and precisely what size (best guess)
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Looking to spend up to $130.00 depending on which type and the benifits it offers, and need around 60-80 GB.
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You dont need a 2nd hd to back up your partition. You can back it up to a writeable DVD as well. Atleast I know this is possible with Norton Ghost and I would assume you can do this with Drive Image as well. Also, the backup of the partition also compresses the image so you should be able to put a 4.7Gb of data there quite easily. It also supports backing up to multiple dvds if your data size increases.
I'd say go ahead with a usb enclosure for an IDE hard drive, for several reasons.
1.) USB2.0 is more than fast enough for an external hard drive. Since the drive isn't going to be actively running, USB1.1 is ok as well if you're willing to wait.
2.) an external drive is easy to store somewhere safe.
3.) Drive image 7 supports backing up to USB devices
4.) enclosures and IDE hard drives are relatively cheap compared to getting an external tape drive or DVD-R drive or an externally connected USB drive.

The only con I can think of is that, because your backup data is sitting on magnetic media(hard drive), it is susceptible to all the problems that come along therein like deterioration over time and whatnot. But these are, for most people, moot points.
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Hey All,
Have installed a New 160GB @ 7200rpm Internal HD and does boost performance and have the capabilities of keeping a full back up of my C:\ HD.
But do have one slight problem, this site has changed since the last time I asked a question.
Cannot find the "Except Answer Link" !!! Need to give a grade but cannot do so and of all things to have a problem with mind ya!
Thanks All,
L391
<Have installed a New 160GB @ 7200rpm Internal HD and does boost performance and have the capabilities of keeping a full back up of my C:\ HD.>

So, What happens when your building burns down?