Using my external hard drive for backup/replacement

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Guest

I just bought an external USB hard drive(120 gigs) b/c my internal hard drive
is so small. I want to use the external not just as a backup, but I actually
want to put certain large programs(such as media player 10) and erase them
off of my internal drive. Can I do this? And will I need to install my OS
onto the external to do this.
The tech support of the company I purchased the external HD from didn't know
the answer, of course.
He said something about my bios allowing it, but I don't know anything about
that.
Thanks
 
It depends on software you want to move.
You can't put MS media player 10 on an external HDD because it is a part of
Windows and
can only be installed/removed through the "Add/Remove Windows Components"
wizard.

But, on the other hand, you can move all your music and video files.
BTW, Media player 10 takes just 5MB of space on my computer, it's not that
much.

Another thing you can do is unistall some programms from your internal HDD
and install them to the exxternal one.
 
What if I just back up EVERYTHING on my external, including my OS? Can I do
that and just use the external HD as my main HD? My internal is freaking
tiny.
 
jp1251 said:
What if I just back up EVERYTHING on my external, including my OS? Can I do
that and just use the external HD as my main HD? My internal is freaking
tiny.
Click to expand...

There are better alternatives than using an USB external HD
as a fixed, local drive (i.e., non-removable) in order to run
Windows from it. One of these is the removable HD on a caddy
that is connected to the IDE controller --- much faster and
more assured. Another is to simply image the smaller internal
HD to an external HD using Ghost or TrueImage, replace the
smaller HD with a significantly larger one and then extract the
HD image file on to the new one. IOW, use the USB external HD
for the purpose that it was designed, i.e., primarily for file
backup or storage.
 
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