Add a Second Hard Drive - Comments

Where can I find memory for $1 per gigabite? Am I misunderstanding what you've written? The reason I say that is because a 1 gig thumb drive or flash drive costs in the neighborhood of $70 to $80.

EDITOR'S NOTE: First, a terminology note... "memory" should be used when discussing RAM -- the working memory that goes poof when you turn off the computer. It's appropriate to use the term "storage" or "hard drive space" when discussing the storage of your files.

Now on to your question. Yes, flash drives (sometimes called thumb drives or keychain drives) that connect via USB are much more expensive. I was referring to internal hard drives. You can purchase a 160GB IDE drive for under $100 now.

While Bob notes that Maxtor One-Touch gets good reviews, (my experience is quite the opposite, having had several of them die very shortly after they are out of warranty), I would note that Maxtor generally gives only a one year warranty on their drives, while Seagate currently gives five year warranties on ATA and SATA drives (not just SCSI). Since Seagate has recently bought Maxtor, there may be a change in coming months, but I'd strongly recommend checking the warranty period on whatever you buy, and you can't go wrong with five years. When in doubt, check the manufacturer's website.

If I choose the external option, is it true that 2.5", i.e. laptop drives, although more expensive, are more robust than their larger counterparts? There are very inexpensive external 2.5" drive boxes available which will take a laptop drive. Would this be a good choice for an external drive which will be carried around?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like a good idea if you plan to be carrying your external drive around.

It should also be mentioned that some motherboards (like mine unfotunately) do not support single bootable SATA drives. It will allow a SATA drive as additional storage or two SATA drives in a bootable RAID configuration. Also, installation can be tricky as SATA drives often require drivers not included in XP, so you have put them on a floppy and press F6 during install so it'll load them. The forums are full of frustrated people trying to get their SATA drives to work. Not for the faint of heart!

There is another option for external drives. If you've done upgrades in the past there is a fair chance you have an unused hard drive laying around. Instead of puchasing a complete external hard drive (for several hundred dollars) get an external hard drive enclosure case (about $40). Just install the unused hard drive in the enclosure case and plug it into a USB port.

Consider carefully the wisdom of purchasing your secondary drive from the same manufacturer as your primary drive as you read my cautionary tale. (Cue the Bethoven organ music.)

I discovered Norton Ghost 2003 wouldn't acknowledge the existence of a second drive if it was a DIFFERENT BRAND then the primary drive. I found this out while trying to recover my system. Fortunately the recovery was a dry run.

Is this still the case with v10.0? Beats the beans outta me! But I think I can be forgiven if I say I don't have the money or energy to experiment. (Fade to black.)

When "spec-ing out" a second drive, isn't it important to note the fact that certain operating systems (Windows ME ver.) only recognize drives up to 120G ? Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. I am not all that "techy".

EDITOR'S NOTE: It's true that a Win98-based OS (such as Win ME) will only support hard drives up to about 128 GB. But if you're still running Win98/ME then you may be unprotected from a wide array of malware. I'd recommend upgrading your OS before buying a new hard drive.

Have a new (Windows XP)PC with SATA drive and room in cage for a second. Four SATA connectors on motherboard as in your picture. Is one primary and one secondary? Do the connectors have different priorities or is this set in BIOS? Wondering if there might be a simple way of dual-booting Windows and Linux simply by controlling which drive boots first. My comment is that it would be helpful to have some more explanation on this.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm really not sure... I don't have a SATA system right now to test with, but why not pop into the BIOS settings and see if you can simply change the boot order?

When I hook up my external hard drive as a back up item, do I want it to be slave or not? I will unhhok it once the files are backed up.

EDITOR'S NOTE: As far as I know, the master/slave distinction is not relevant for an external USB-connected drive. If you do have a switch, I'd set it to slave.

I need to add more memory to my old operating system. Is it better to upgrade the RAM or add a second hard drive....it seems it would be easier to add a second external hard drive, but would that give me the desired result?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You're mixing apples and oranges... RAM is the working memory used by Windows and other programs. It is cleared when you turn off the computer. A hard drive stores your files permanently. If your computer seems to be low on hard drive space, an external drive would be helpful. If it complains about low memory, you need RAM.