external HD

[Compequip]

Hey can someone please help? I have a 3 year old xp p4 3.0 ht system with 1 gb of ram and a 6600 gpu. everything works or worked great until recently. I use this computer to surf the internet and for work files. But lately this thing is doing all kinds of weird stuff. I can't open some basic files like word or P.P. or excel. Then I try rebooting and the computers hd makes a lot of noise like it's working and 15 minutes later still won't shut down so I have to unplug the comp. I'm afraid the hd is going bad and I'll lose all my info. My question is what would be the easyiest way to back up my files. I have another computer, but it's vista and I'm not comfortable at using it yet. I bought a memory stick 32mg but it's not big enough. How does a external hd work, plug and play? Can I transfer my files to my vista machine? I like my old system better than my vista, but I'm thinking of building a new system and going back to XP or trying win 7. I don't want to take down to the local comp. store, because of personnel info. Maybe I'll ask here or craigslist if someone want to help and I can pay??? Hmmm what do you guys think?

Thank You,

Confused

 

[The_Other_One]

An external drive works essentially the same as a USB flash drive. Plug it in, a new drive shows up, copy your stuff over. Or seeing as you have two computers, you could always copy the files across the network.

As for building a new computer or whatever, any computer now had drivers primarily for Vista and above. If you look hard enough, you could probably find all the drivers needed to convert your newer computer to XP, but this is becoming increasingly difficult

 

[Compequip]

Awesome, so is there a popular external hard drive and would I be able to store my music and documents permantely? Or is this not recommended?

 

[fmw]

The problem may not be a failing hard drive. It might be a hard drive that is nearly full or even a virus or ad ware on your system. Nevertheless you and me and everybody else should have back up.

My recommendation is buy an external enclosure and put a SATA hard drive in it. The thing will connect via USB. An alternative would be simply to put a second hard drive in your system and back up to that. The advantage of the external drive, of course, is that it is easier to move it from one computer to another.

Yes, hard drive is about as reliable as you can get in this day and age for backup and storage. If you need even more security you can make the backup a RAID that uses two hard drives with the same information on both. We call it RAID 2 in the business.

 

[Compequip]

The problem may not be a failing hard drive. It might be a hard drive that is nearly full or even a virus or ad ware on your system. Nevertheless you and me and everybody else should have back up.

My recommendation is buy an external enclosure and put a SATA hard drive in it. The thing will connect via USB. An alternative would be simply to put a second hard drive in your system and back up to that. The advantage of the external drive, of course, is that it is easier to move it from one computer to another.

Yes, hard drive is about as reliable as you can get in this day and age for backup and storage. If you need even more security you can make the backup a RAID that uses two hard drives with the same information on both. We call it RAID 2 in the business.

I'm thinking it's a virus, but how would I know where it is. My comp. has AVG and Webroot and ran both scans but still have issues. I figured if I replaced the HD it would solve my issue, but what if it's in a file I save to the new external hd? I have seen my virus software come up and say trojan and contain it in a small box when I was on the internet. I go to lots of car and truck forums and places to buy parts and apparently one was bogus and I couldn't even get in the site. Off subject but you explained raid 2 what is raid 0 and raid 1?