External hard drive into a PC system??

T

taylormsj

New Member
Hello
I have an 80gb external USB hard drive.
Inside is a Maxtor Diamond max 10, 80GB PATA133 HDD

I was wondering if i could put this inside a new PC system [a barebone pc im buying] and would it work as the only hard drive inside the machine and could it run an OS on it fine?

The file system is FAT32

So can i clean the drive or format it etc... so it wil work in a new PC as the only HDD and run an OS on it?

Any help would be great

Also - can a motherboard that runs SATA use a PATA had drive

thanks
 
Of course, you just answered your own question when you said what kind of drive it was. Did you "build" the enclosure? They just use standard drives.

A motherboard can use either SATA or PATA. I had both in a computer once, one for Vista, the other as my primary(XP) boot drive.
 
So the system FAT32 wil work - because my current HDD is NTFS i thort that is the only file system that worked - what is the diifference

So if i want to run an OS on this what should i do ?

Build the PC then run the OS disk and install it as usual??

Do i have to format the HDD or wipe it clean or can i leave my stuff on there??

Thanks a lot
 
FAT32 is older, used for 98 and below. But it'll work with current OS's(probably Vista, but not 100%) However, if you use that drive as the primary, I'd go on and format to NTFS. You don't have the file size limitation and what not...

When you run the setup, there should be an option to format and partition the drive. Just format to NTFS.

You can install with other stuff on the drive(assuming you have the free space ;) ) But personally, I'd go ahead and format if possible. Also, it is possible to convert to NTFS later on, without formatting and such.
 
I have stuff like music and some videos on there already - should i put these onto some dvd discs and format it to NTFS now??

Also - once the PC is built - how do i instal windows - just run the CD and it wil pop up?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top