Absolute Beginners Guide to Upgrading and Fixing Your PC

Upgrade #1: Adding an External Hard Drive

The easiest type of hard drive to install is the external variety. These drives typically install via either USB or FireWire.

Installation of an external hard drive is relatively simple. Just follow these steps:

  1. Plug the new drive into a live electrical outlet.

  2. Connect the drive to an open USB or FireWire port on your PC.

  3. If your new drive came with an installation CD (and it probably did), insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive and run the installation program. Otherwise, Windows should recognize the new drive and automatically install the proper device drivers.

"Mike Sez"

If you're looking for ease of installation, an external hard drive is ideal especially if you use a FireWire or fast USB 2.0 connection. If you want the fastest possible access speeds, however, you should go with an internal hard drive. In addition, you can't use an external hard drive as your sole or primary drive; you can't boot your system from an external drive.

Once installed, an external drive assumes the next highest available drive letter on your system. So, for example, if your current hard drive is drive C:, the new external drive will be drive D:. (If your CD-ROM drive was formerly drive D:, it will now become drive E:; when it comes to letters, your system likes to group similar types of drives together.)

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