Backup My Harddrive Using An External Harddrive?
Submitted by admin on October 1, 2009 – 3:51 am3 Comments
I have an Dell Inspiron b130 laptop and I am about to reformat my harddrive. I want to backup EVERYTHING(about 50 GB) as quickly as possible. I plan on buying an external hardrive to store all my data on. But I am no familiar with these.
1.Would I have to install a sepreate operation system (Xp) on the external harddrive.
2 And What types of cords will I need?
3.Oh and are external harddrives even compatible with notebooks?
4.If so can i treat the external drive like a usb flahsdrive meaning is it Plug and Play and can I use it on any computer that will allow it to self install.
Also, any recommedations on what type to purchase and any links that will provide info on external hardrives?
if you want to make a single backup, you can just copy all your staff somewhere for example on ext drive. But it’s worth to do backup of the system regulary, and i’d recomend to use 3d party backup progs, like true image. About your questions:
1)no there is no need to install a separate os on ext drive.
2)commonly Ext drives have an USB interface, so you will need USB cable, but usually it’s came with the drive.
3,4)Yes of caurse coz as i said it have USB interface
your best option is to buy an external small box that holds small notebook hard drives you can choose capacities of the drive till 100 GB they came in 2 flavors actually fire wire connection and usb2.0 connection that can reach speeds till 480mbits/sec u can find them in a any decent computer store . u can buy them separately and mount the hard drive inside the box it is rather easy . u have to remember to format the hard drive before using it …
right click the my computer icon and from the drop down menu choose manage then go to disk management
and then you can see your new hard drive and format it from there .
you can only copy those files you need…you don’t need to install xp into the external drive…after all, you are reformatting you rinternal drive, so that’s where the OS should be. so, only copy those files you have (audio, text, video, etc). and yes, external HDs are compatible with pretty much any computer…think of it as your “portable HD”…and i guess your flash drive analogy could work…think of the external HD as a big, really big flash drive. btw, you only need one cable (aside from the power cord) and that’s either a usb cable or firewire cable
here’s a link to some external hard drives…http://www.compusa.com/products/products…