USB external disk drives

[phine958]

My question is about these new USB 2.0 external hard drives and how they work in relation to the existing drive(s)? Do they just take the next drive letter and work as additional drive space for the computers storage as well as operational disk space for processing data or are they for storage and back-up only?

[jonah]

An external USB hard can be used just like an internal drive. The drive should take the next available letter (ex. mine is G:, after the DVDs).

I don't see any performance issues, but if you are using an application that does a lot of disk access, I couldn't say. Also, you can use it just for backup.

I keep all of my data etc. on the external. That way if I have to perform a destructive restore, everything is safe.

[merlin_2]

i would check out if you mobo supports them?what operating system have you got....

[phine958]

Gentlemen,
     Thanks for the information! On the motherboard, operating system and application, it’s an old P-II 600 MHz, XP-Home and creating DVDs. Note I didn’t say copying DVDs! The present C:/ = 20 G-byte and D:/ = 10 G-byte! There’s a 2.0 USB card with a Pinnacle Movie Box so I need a drive to store and create DVDs from VHF or 8-mm video tape.

[Raptor]

It is legal to copy certain media. It depends on what was written in the EULA.