Page 1 of External Hard Drive for my laptop?!?!?!?!

I am looking for an external hard drive for my laptop as it only has a 15gb internal drive....
The questions are, do i have to get the same writing speed as my laptop?, mine is 4200 and most of the other drives are 5600 or 7200 speeds, does it matter if i mix them?
Also, do i have to get a 2.5" drive or can i use whatever i like??
I really dont have a clue bout this, so any ideas would bevery welcomed and appreciated..
Many thanks
Mike

As for as I know any external drive will be fine, your only limitation is the connections, USB, USB 2 or firewire. make sure the drive you buy can be connected to your laptop.

All the best

Ger.



Mmmmmm Donuts

Yeah, seems to me that the best/fastest connection for me will be usb 2, so will have to buy a converter as i only have standard usb at the mo. :/
ps, thanks for the reply
mike

No converter will make USB1(1.1) into faster USB2 (plugs are identical anyway).

You will need to buy some form of external drive caddy & interface. Someone posted details of one earlier this week for about £12.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 29th September 2004, 20:44

ebuyer.co.uk I think!

Quote:
No converter will make USB1(1.1) into faster USB2 (plugs are identical anyway).
Think he meant a USB 2 PCMCIA card?
If not, then thats what he needs! Lol, and Priceless (Someone posted their new Eshop somewhere) do a Cardbus PCMCIA USB 2 adapter for a tenner.

Works fine, and TRUST ME, do NOT try to use ANY kind of external hard drive on USB 1.1!!

I got the Iomega one (think it`s really a flash memory that shows as a hard drive), runs the equivalent of 5200 RPM (I think) on USB2, and it`s fine...on USB 1.1, it`s soooooooooooooooooo slow it`s unreal!
(2 hours to transfer 10 gig!)

Jimbo : oÞ

Quote:
do NOT try to use ANY kind of external hard drive on USB 1.1!!

I do, but then again its only a thing to extract my idiots....err users ...No idiots (right the first time) data that they didnt back upon a reg basis from their laptops. IMO they can wait a month of Sundays for their oh so precious but not backed up data.

Laptop users in a corporate enviroment tend to think they are a special case, they are but not one I would want to boast about being in.

This external enclosure from SVP does it all (USB2 and Firewire) for £24.98 + P&P.

The item code is AC 5041.

You can use the enclosure for any 3.5" or 5.25" disk drive with IDE connections (ie hard disk or CD/DVD drive). A power supply and fan is built in and it is very easy to set up. Obviously, you will need some sort of power source but I think it might be possible to buy an adaptor for a car cigarette lighter socket.

If you have a 2.5" (laptop spec) hard drive that you want to use as the external one, then item code AC 5057 might be better - it`s a smaller enclosure (USB2 only) for £12.24 + P&P.

It really boils down to how much flexibility you want. Personally, I prefer having the option to use a DVD writer or hard drive, depending on the situation, and being able to use either Firewire or USB2, depending on what connections the machine I`m connecting the drive to has.