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Hard Drive Upgrades: How To
If you are looking for more hard drive space then you will have to install a second hard drive, or replace your primary hard drive. Click here to see our recommended hard drives. If you do not want to open your computer case, then you can buy an external hard drive, that will just plug into a usb, or firewire port on your computer. Most newer computers have USB ports built right in.
External Hard Drive
If you are installing the drive externally, you just need to plug the drive into a powersource (if required) and plug the hard drive into the computer. Your system should pick up the hard drive automatically, and it may prompt you to install the driver disk. The most popular types of external drives are connected by USB or Firewire. If you are going to get an external drive, if you are looking for speed, then you should one that connects by Firewire or USB 2.0. These types of drives are very fast. The USB 1.1 drives are very slow. You should also make sure that the drive itself is 7200 RPM.
Internal Hard Drive
Hard drives can be IDE, Serial ATA, or SCSI. It all depends on which type of controller that you have. You can purchase an add on card that would allow you to run whichever type of drive that you would like. The newest standard is the Serial ATA. The higher the RPM, the faster the drive.
If you are installing the hard drive internally, then you will need to decide if it will be replacing the current drive, or if it will be added as a secondary drive. Then you will need to find out what type and speed of hard drive that your system will support. You can find this information from the computer manufacturer's or the motherboard manufacturer's website.
If you are replacing the current hard drive, then you will have to install an operating system onto the new hard drive after it is installed, and transfer any data from the old drive to the new drive. You can also use a disk imaging software to make a backup image of your old hard drive, and then burn that image right onto the new hard drive, and your system and data will be exactly like it was, but you will have more hard drive space to work with.
If you will be adding the drive as a secondary drive, then refer to the documentation to see if you will need to change any of the jumper settings on the drive. Complete instructions will be located inside of the documentation that comes with the drive.
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