External hard drives

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Guest

A similar question to others.I've successfully installed and partitioned my
new et.hard drive, but now I'm not sure how I should use it.I thought I could
simply cut or copy/paste my C drive onto it,thus leaving the original C drive
at it's maximum capacity.Is this not the case?
 
External hard drives are for file and backup storage only.
You cannot install a Windows operating system on it.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

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:

| A similar question to others.I've successfully installed and partitioned my
| new et.hard drive, but now I'm not sure how I should use it.I thought I could
| simply cut or copy/paste my C drive onto it,thus leaving the original C drive
| at it's maximum capacity.Is this not the case?
 
No you dont want to do this. You can however use the external drive to
install new programs too or store your data. If your almost out of space then
try uninstalling some programs and reinstalling them to the external drive.
The only problem with this is that you will have to have the external drive
attached in order to use those porgrams in the future.

Most people use external drives for backups or extra storage only. Its not
normal to use it as a boot drive but you can if you want too. Some of the
newer BIOS's support the USB boot function.

The Woodpile
 
I should also say that in order to boot to the external drive you would have
to do a new install directly too it. Since a 100% copy from your old hard
drive would not allow it to boot. You would also have to install drivers in
order for XP to see it during the install.

The Woodpile
 
mike j said:
A similar question to others.I've successfully installed and partitioned my
new et.hard drive, but now I'm not sure how I should use it.I thought I could
simply cut or copy/paste my C drive onto it,thus leaving the original C drive
at it's maximum capacity.Is this not the case?
Click to expand...

Hello, Storage and backup of non-system files. Video, photos, graphics,
music and large text files. You should make a link in "send to" also
dragging items to the drive letter or folders in the drive all ways to move
files. In this use you can also move the drive to other computers for large
downloading.
Or if the drive can be removed from the case and installed into your unit
then you can clone the "c" drive and use it as a system backup. Something
like Acronis True Image can be of use, not only for drive image but for
cloning drives. I think Acronis also has a boot cd that can be used to locate
a external drive and download the clone onto a clean harddrive. I have not
used some of these methods but you requested some ideas.
Take CAre.
beamish.
 
Many make a folder/subfolder hierarchy before copying/pasting files, or
before simply writing new ones on a personal backup storage hard drive.
Makes it easier to find stuff.

Be sure to disable system restore on the external hard drive, its just
wasting space and cpu cycles. Useless for personal storage.
 
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