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I have one desktop which is very old like (> 9 years) and one laptop which is new Dell Inspiron 9400
The HDD i have in desktop is IDE based it dosent support SATA ( done even if SATA was discovered by then) . I have USB card in it so i can use USB hard drives
The laptop has got 80 GB ( it says its 80 but actually its just 70 ) it got filled fully and now i need new harddisk to transfer my data
Now what are options with me
The main thing is that i should be able to use it with both Desktop and laptop .
Which hard drive should i buy
Should i go for external USB drive? What factors like speed , rotation , capacity should i consider and look for . Is buying disk with huge capacity ( like 500GB) a good idea?
Any casing specific point? My budget is around $150
Any suggestions would be appreciated
You're not going to be able to share a primary drive between your notebook and desktop. That is, you could use it to transfer data back and forth, but attempting to boot the same hard drive on both is impractical - too many differences in drivers, etc. (The only possibility would be to have separate system drives for the two machines.)
I would think you are on the right track with USB. However, your 9 year old system is only going to support USB 1.1. Get a USB 2.0 card for it while you are at it.
Purchase a hard drive enclosure that is both USB and FireWire capable and purchase a stock hard drive of your choice and size for the enclosure.
A good hard drive enclosure will save you some time and money if the drive ever fails or fills up. Simply replace the drive.
I prefer FireWire connections for external drives because I find it is more stable than USB in a Windows environment. Of course, USB does have the advantage of powering a hard drive (up to a limit- larger drives require more power and cooling fans) and USB, in theory, is supposed to be somewhat faster than FireWire (although I find the opposite to be true).
If you need a drive that can be shared by two or more computers, you'll need a network hard drive.
Where does firewire connects in laptop i have got one 1394 port in it
1394 = Firewire. Firewire is just Apple's trademarked name for 1394.
By using Firewire, you won't need to update your notebook to USB if it isn't already USB 2.0. You'd need to get a Firewire or USB 2.0 card for your desktop. There's really no need to update your desktop to USB 2.0 in this case.
The suggestion in the previous post is that you purchase an external hard drive ENCLOSURE that supports USB and firewire. These have a USB and/or Firewire interface, and are designed to accept an internal hard drive that you purchase separately. They are available to work with either ATA or SATA drives.
If you get Firewire on both computers, there really wouldn't be a need for the USB interface on the enclosure, except to give you compatibility to hook it up to some other computer.
Most external hard drive enclosures provide both USB and FireWire ports and you can expect to pay between $20 - $50+ US for one. Try to get one that provides a cooling fan with good air circulation. Not all do. The hard drive enclosure should be capable of handling the type of hard drive you're going to install in it (ie IDE, EIDE, SATA, SCSI, etc, interface) and it's power requirements.
You're probably not going to find a 500gb hard drive that can be powered by USB or FireWire ports (which is a bad idea anyhow) so expect to be a lugging around a separate power supply for it (which should be included with the hard drive enclosure you purchase).
I'd still recommend getting a Firewire/USB 2.0 port card for your desktop. The extra cost would be nominal and USB 2.0 is up to 40x fast than USB 1.1. Since you're upgrading anyhow, upgrade. :)
Please correct me
1) My desktop has got USB interface card which i added recently as it was not having originally
2) I buy hard disk case which has both firewire and usb interface
3) i buy some hard disk , what type of hdd will this be? will it be SATA or something?
I am confused here
If you added the USB port card recently to your computer it's probably USB 2.0 compliant. But you should check anyhow to make sure.
If it is USB 2.0 compliant you might just want to use the USB port on the enclosure for the desktop and the Firewire port on the enclosure for the laptop. This would save you a few dollars on upgrading a card you just recently upgraded for your desktop computer.
Or you could just go out buy one of those cheap USB hard drives. Generally, I wouldn't recommend it for important data (learned the hard way) but I guess they do ok for some. :)
It's not just an enclosure, but includes some electronics to convert between USB (and/or Firewire) and a hard drive interface. The particular hard drive interface that it supports depends on the particular "enclosure".
I think we may be confusing you with too much information, LOL!
You could just go out and buy a "USB hard drive". But we're trying to steer you to a cheaper and more versatile solution - i.e. buy an enclosure and the hard drive of your choice. It's the same thing, only you build it yourself. (In a very limited way - e.g. you stick the hard drive in the enclosure.)
