External Hard drives

a1sporty15

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I'm starting to have valuable information on my hard drive that i would like to keep for a long time. But here is where the problems comes. I Want to reformat windows but I can't just save all these files (movies etc) on flash drives and CDs. So I decided to take a old (2003) Wester Digital Hard drive and put it in my computer as an External Hard drive to just keep all my goodies on. But the problem is I don't know how to do this... correctly... I would appreciate if any one maybe has any good tutorials on doing this or have any advice for me. And what materials do I need. I know i need the HD, Jumpers.. Any thing else? Thanks in Advance!
 
So I decided to take a old (2003) Wester Digital Hard drive and put it in my computer as an External Hard drive

????

Put it IN your computer as an External Drive?

I'm not sure, are you asking us how to convert a hard drive that used to be in a computer and put it in an external hard drive case?

Or are you actually wanting to put a spare hard drive you have laying around, in your computer as a slave drive?

Your terminology is confusing.

External Drive ... purchase an external drive case from newegg or some place and follow the instructions that come with it. Make sure you purchase the correct form - IDE or SATA. You stated your drive was a 2003 ... odds are it's an IDE drive.

Internal Drive ... on the drive itself should be a diagram of how to set jumpers for Master or Slave. Unless of course it's SATA ... no jumpers required. But if it is indeed IDE ... you probably want to set yours as slave and connect it to an available IDE cable (the middle connector) with the Master drive (cd rom or other hard drive) at the end of the cable.

If it's truly an external hard drive you're looking for, to connect to your pc via USB (or firewire) might I suggest just buying a new one. They're relatively inexpensive these days.
 
Also think about setting up a RAID 1 array. This is a system I use to protect important stuff that I want to keep.:)
 
6 hours later and the same suggestion made?

not an unusual occurance.

To the OP, if the information you want to keep is really important this about the external drive option give by CrossCech, the external cages are relatively inexpensive ($20-$30) if you already have a hard drive. This is a nice option because you can take it with you if you go somewhere or store it somewhere away from your computer in case of a fire or something.
 
Remeniz

Didn't mean to come off all hard. I guess I get annoyed after taking the time to thoroughly read a thread/posted question(s), as well as other post'ers suggestions or comments, take the time to give an honest effort in providing an answer or solution from experiences I may have had (or move on if someone else has made the same suggestion I was thinking), only to have following post'ers reword it as their own.

As xtremezx2 said ... not an unusual occurance ... be nice if it changed, though.
 
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