External Hard Drives: Pros & Cons?

[Keebler Elf]

If you are thinking external sata there will be an expansion connector at the rear bottom of the pc where the cards are.

For internal, you can check the bios (probably not your thing) or check the manufactures website.

I've got my manual in front of me. Will it say in there? The only thing I see is 2 x UltraATA100/66.

Is that it?

 

[baci2004]

I've got my manual in front of me. Will it say in there? The only thing I see is 2 x UltraATA100/66.

Is that it?

That's an old board...you don't have it.

Keep in mind if you end up with a USB2 drive you may have read/write issues if you only have a USB 1 port (I did). This problem can be remeadied with a USB2 card; they are about $30.
Don't you just love computers???

 

[Keebler Elf]

Luckily, USB 2.0 is the one thing I do have.

I'm actually now thinking of scrapping the external drive idea and instead buying an enclosure. I have some smaller hard drives lying around and they'll do for the next 6 months or so until I want to replace one of my big internal drives. Then I can just move the internal drive to the enclosure. The flexibility makes more sense to me.

 

[Keebler Elf]

Can I get by with an enclosure that doesn't have a fan if I'm only going to be using the drive for occasional backups? The drive will otherwise be off.