External HD

I need to add a external HD for work. It also will need a seperate OS on it. I just need to keep play from work.

How can I do this? Thanks.

I have the same question!

They make USB 2.0 and firewire HDD's. You could also buy a regular hard drive and put in an external enclosure, and most of the external enclosures can also hook up with USB or firewire. I actually have a 40gb USB external HDD and it works great for backing stuff up, just might run slower if you have a seperate OS on it.

WELCOME TO THE FORUMS

or you can just get a real external hard drive, those usually hook uo to the usb and just haul it back and forth i guess you can find them at newegg.com or if thats not cheaper go with what he said ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Using an external HD with a separate OS will require your BIOS on all PC's you plan on using it with to support booting to USB device. Many new motherboards allow this, but check you BIOS to be sure. In some case a BIOS upgrade may be available if currently unsupported on your target motherboard.

Hey thanks for the feed-back and the welcome.

I was considering a Firewire imput over USB. Anyone know which is faster?

So correct me if I am wrong, I need to tell my BIOS at start-up each time I want to boot from this external HD and thats it?

Firewire is faster than usb 2.0. I believe there are a couple different versions of firewire out there too. I think the latest is 1394b or something like that (probably the fastest. You could easily get one of these: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-155-205&depa=0
and get an IDE hard drive of your choice and just slap it in there and you'd be off and running!

Oh yeah, and I've never put a seperate OS on an external HD so I'm not really sure how that would actually work...

I was actually considering this WD drive: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-213&depa=0

My office employee's will take notice then. LOL

Anyone know where I can find info on setting this other OS up? plz...

Welcome to the Forums!

I wouldn't recommend trying to set up the OS on one. The available bandwidth is lower than the marketing numbers suggest.

USB 2.0 is 480Mb/s, which is the equivalent of 60MB/s. Overhead for the protocol will reduce that to about 50MB/s. Latency will be much higher than on an IDE interface as well.

Firewire, last I checked, is 400Mb/s, equivalent to 50MB/s. Overhead is less than USB, but still takes a toll. Again, latency will be high.

Either will probably run an OS, but not quickly. Additionally, you will need the controller drivers on FDD to load the system. That's quite likely to be an adventure and may require you to create the txtsetup.oem file and configuration. The drive will likely only be bootable on the system it's loaded from, unless the hardware is identical. Even then, you may have activation issues if you are planning on using XP and changing between systems, as this is technically a violation of the COA and you'd really need a liscense for each system.

USB 2.0 is 480Mb/s, which is the equivalent of 60MB/s. Overhead for the protocol will reduce that to about 50MB/s.

Click to expand...

Well, wish it was that way.. most hard drives today just *barely* have a STR higher than 50MB/s ... and only in the external tracks.

The reality with USB2 is : For new hardware with integrated USB2 controller in the southbridge (such as Intel 82801,...) the max. transfer rate you will ever see is 34MB/sec. For PCI based solutions such as NEC Host controller (last generation), don't expect transfer rates above 25MB/sec. Other implementations always lower than this numbers...

All of this said, STR is not that important (as long as higher than 10-15MB/sec and not using it for video editing ).

Regards
FTC

get an external enclosure...tis cheaper. as for the OS you dont want to do that. i forsee a great many problems with that good luck

can you really install windows on the external drive? on my old computer(laptop, not usb bootable) i tried to install windows on the external drive, but it said that i cannot install it on the external one for some reason, maybe because i don't have USB/Firewire bootability (if it can be done, then i am thinking about installing linux on the external drive and boot up from there. not violating any laws .
i would be greatly appreciated if someone can tell me if it is doable. thankx in advance.

EDIT: even thought USB2.0 is 480mbit/s, it is still slower than firewire(400mbit/s) when it comes to external hard drives (according to my previous experiences). i would go with a firewire one.

I think I may give it a try and see. If all else fails I have a back-up drive. LOL