Internal hard drive or external hard drive?

I have been using an IBM, T42, laptop for about 4years. The internal, 40, gig, hard drive is about 90% full. I want to install MS Office on my laptop, but I need more hard drive space. Should I get an internal or external hard drive? Can I install an internal, laptop, hard drive by myself or do I need to be qualified? Portability isn't an issue and I think my laptop has about three to four years of life left.

If you only have a 40 gig hard drive currently, it might not be a bad idea to do both! I was in the same situation with my Compaq Armada which had a 30 gig. I bought an enclosure online and put the old hard drive in that, then put a new hard drive in the actual laptop. Now I have a 120 gig hard drive in my laptop and a 30 gig external hard drive. It is very simple to replace the drive, it is in a sled on either the right or left side, usually only secured by one screw. You just pop that out, remove 4 more screws and swap out the drive. You could reinstall windows at that point, or use norton ghost to copy your windows installation to your new hard drive. It is included on the UBCD which will be in sources in addition to the link to the enclosure I am using. The best part is not only will you have lots of internal space, but that 40 gigs will be portable and you can hook it up to other computers and it doesn't require external power.

External.

Why, do you ask? because a 4 year old laptop can die on you anytime. Its also more convenient that if you choose to upgrade to a new laptop you can use the external drive as a backup and transfer your files from your old laptop to your new one.

its also not economically viable to upgrade an old system. if your laptop dies, your data will remain on your old hard drive and you will have to purchase new accessories to be able to recover your old data.

Hi,

Your choice really but only if you feel confident at installing the drive.

For me I'd go for the external as I bet you don't have you full system backed or are you one of the very few sensible users?

The external will be slower but a lot safer for your data.

If I was feeling a bit flush I'd have both as they are pretty cheap at the moment, although I expect that laptop HD's are still expensive.


Arnak

You should get an external hard drive and offload your personal files to your external drive. This will be a good backup practice too. It was also free up some space on your internal hard drive too

You maybe able to upgrade your hard drive to something bigger. Call up IBM or visit them at www.ibm.com and punch your serial number of your laptop and they will tell you what upgrade options you have

If you are not sure how to install a hard drive. You should consider a computer tech put it in for you

Good Luck

Best, easiest, bet would be to hook up an external USB drive. It's slower, but USB 2 is pretty fast.

After you install the new drive, copy old data files (pictures, music, etc.) from your internal drive to the new external drive.

Once you have a good copy on the new drive, delete the files you don't need from the internal drive.

Make sure you install MS Office on the internal drive! Even a fast external disk is too slow to use for program files.

i actually had that same laptop with a the 40gb HD, and i bought a nice new 250 GB external HDbcz mine was getting pretty full, and less than two weeks later the computer jsut stopped working, so i upgraded to a dell D610.
but anyways, the external is the way to go, bcz your laptop might stop working,a nd it is not always the HD's fault.

So go external, and that way u always have it wen u get a new computer

I did something like David, works like a charm.