external harddrive

[tazpaige]

dell dimenison 4600 mini tower
30gb harddrive
2 mb memory
cd/cd r/w and read dvd
 
my computer (event log) is telling me that i have a harddrive problem and need to backup my drive.  i thought of trying a second harddrive but, worry about changeing the drive letters for  my cd r/w or the r/dvd.  so, i am asking if someone can tell me what type of external drive i should get.  i a leaning towards the type of houseing that will allow me to change the harddrives in it.  i know nothing about the new usb 2.0 externals. 
 
thanks for your help.

tazpaige

[Comp Guy]

You should get an external hard drive enclosure kit if you plan on switching around the hard drives as the externals. Otherwise, just get an external hard drive. I believe that you can boot from an external USB hard drive by changing the settings in the BIOS.

[truenorth]

An earlier post i was involved with by someone other than myself if i remember correctly stated that one could NOT boot from an external drive for the O/S XP.truenorth

[Comp Guy]

Ok sorry I got confused with something else.

[patio]

An earlier post i was involved with by someone other than myself if i remember correctly stated that one could NOT boot from an external drive for the O/S XP.truenorth

This is true for XP and anything newer as far as Windows is concerned...
To clarify...yes it can be done with aton of tweaking...is it worth it ? No.