External hard drive advice

I've decided to have a look at getting an external hard drive to store my pictures on.

I've only got a 40Gb hard drive and it's just about full. Despite clearing out all the junk and maximising space I'm forever getting problems with low memory.

I'm thinking external because at some point I may well replace the pc and the idea of fiddling around inside the pc (with my track record) is a bit off putting.

What should I be looking for and what other options are there ?

Get a USB one Phil, no messing with screws and brackets, plug it into the mains, connect your USB cable to the PC and off you go, look around for prices, because it's nearly xmas the shops have put the prices up a bit.

Silicon Group in Alloa have a 500 gig for £79, I phoned them today to compare prices with Maplins ( they're roughly the same)

For an external HDD i'd get one with at least a dual interface (USB + Firewire)and if your PC has a firewire port i'd use that instead of USB. It's not only quicker than USB 2, its more stable as well, even though USB 2 is rated at 480mbps and firewire (400) 400mbps. I use a quad interface HDD with firewire 800 (twice as fast as firewire 400) but then you would need to buy a firewire 800 pci card as well, which are quite expensive. Even better than firewire 800 is a external esata II HDD which should match the speed of your internal HDD, but of course if you dont have a esata port on your pc then you would have to buy a card also. Your probablly thinking at this point , "why dont I just buy an internal HDD?" well, the point in having an external HDD is for backup and to store important pics and files etc etc, of course you can do that with an internal but the big differance IMO is that with an external HDD you can choose to backup/tranfer you files etc then safely and easily disconect/switch off untill needed again. But an internal is on and off evertime you power up your pc and so gets used unnecessarily. Of course you could just open your case and unplug it everytime you backed up, but would you? An external HDD is more convenient and of course should last longer than an internal HDD if not being constantly powered on and off.
As for your low memory problem, make sure you dont have to many progs running at the same time, also, run msconfig.exe and see what programs are starting/loading up and uncheck what is not necessary. Maybe you could do with upgrading your physical memory (RAM) get at least another 1GB (if you have a spare slot) and all should be well.

Thanks guys - I'm at the stage (only sometimes) that if I've outlook AND Internet Explorer (3 tabs) running I have to close my email before opening a third program like photoshop.

If that's the case Phil, then it's as DJ said, you need more ram memory, the more you have the easier it is for your PC to multi-task, Silicon in Alloa are doing a 1gig strip for £16.

If you want speed you just can't beat the internal ones (Although I've never used a firewire one before tho). Internal ones usually have a bigger cache and higher rpms.

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...e=MDnewsletter
500GB Seagate Barracuda SATA II 300 7200rpm 32MB cache Hard Drive oem (Manufacturer's 5yr Warranty)

I would point out if you dont have a spare plug socket, you can get external HD that will run on just the usb power, these are good as a back up device as they are normally a lot smaller in size.

It does sound like you could do with more memory. Judging by the hard drive size it maybe a old-ish pc so the memory time could well be different. I would go to crucial memory and use the finder they have which will tell you the time you need, and when you know that go somewhere else as crucial are bloody expensive

The external Seagate has almost the same spec Azz, 7,200rpm, that's 3gig a second tranfer rate, the only diff is the cache size, the external has 16meg, the internal has 32meg, good prices on that site btw.

External drives can be handy for sure...

Does the inside of your PC have a spare bay for an internal drive? They are relatively easy to fit... Even I've done it!!!

Cheers

A lot to read over.

I was looking at my kit at work today. DJ - I thought the Firewire thing was an 'Apple Mac' thing but have since seen it as a good multimedia thing although I'm really just after picture storage. Again - I could be wrong.

Stormey yes it's getting on a bit -

Dell - Dimension 2400
Processor - Intel(R)Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz
Memory (Ram) - 512MB
Operating System - XP
Version 5.1.2600

If that means anything to anybody