Hard Drive For Fs

[Bluescaster 21]

Hi All, I posted this query in another Forum back in October with little response (In last few days Greg has offered some advice - Thanks) I wondered if it might be useful to run it again here as this seems a suitable subject under this forum. Thanks..................."I wonder if anyone could give me some advice. For several years I've used a separate Hard Drive for my Flight Sim programs - using the other drive for the operating system and everything else. (A tip I read about here a long time ago) My system is a few years old now and no doubt the HDD is slow by comparison to the newer ones. I have recently seen adverts for these new fangled "External" hard drives that are just plug-in. I wondered; If they would be suitable to transfer my Flight Sim programs onto. If they would work; If they might be an improvement etc. My Hard drives are both connected via the old "Tape" type leads and therefore I believe, not 'SATA' or 'RAID' drives/connected. (I confess to not really knowing what these terms mean, but want to explain what type of drives I have.) Thanks for reading this far - any help will be appreciated. "Regards, Blue System Details: Asus A7N8X-E Motherboard. AMD Athlon 3200+ CPU. 2X HDD. (Both 80Gbt) Maxtor 6Y080L0 & SanDisk Cruzer Micro USB ST380011A - NOT SATA (1 for FS, 1 for O.S etc.) Windows XP Home + SP3. Nvidia 7800GS+ (AGP) Card. 512MBCRT Monitor "LG Flatron ez T910BU" - 1280X1024.@75HzRAM OCZ PC3200 3GB - (3X 1GB)DDR Platinum. mXTC CAS2.Current VGA Drivers: 169.21570W Pro Dual fan PSU

[Sharrow 0]

HiWithout going into detail about all this my advice to you would be to upgrade both your HDD's to brand new SATA drives (2 x 500GB for example). Your motherboard has SATA connectors as far as I know. Then install your OS and programs onto one and FS on the other, like you have now. When you then upgrade your rig in the future you can take these new drives with you.External HDD's are mostly suited for archive/back-up purposes as more often than not they will use a (relatively slow) USB connection. Some external HDD's use e-SATA (external SATA) but for this you need to have a e-SATA port on your motherboard, which you do not have. So in this case the answer will be no, external drives are not the way to go and you will not see any real benefit. Upgrade as suggested above with 2 new internal drives - 500GB HDD's are very cheap nowadays.Hope this helpsKonrad