external or internal what the diffrence?

smiley

smiley

smiley

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just wondering what the diffrence is between a external hardrive and a internal.

because i am looking to buy a portable hardrive to put programs on such as limewire and bitorrent the portable hardive i am looking at is the Western Digital WDXMS600TE (60gig).

So if i did happen to catch a virus of limewire then it would only affect the portable hard drive right? and not my operating systems hardrive.

thx for the help smiley
 
The virus is likely to affect the pc as a whole. The only difference is that the hard disk is outside the case, and as such, connected differently (Either USB, Firewire or External SATA). But a virus tends to replicate itself across the whole pc, especially targeting the system files. Thats assuming its quite a malicious virus. Always make sure you have the latest antivirus.
 
The main difference between internal and external drives is the physical location of your storage. The OS treats the two drives the same - and therefore so will a virus.


The main advantage you will have of an external drive is you can carry it round to your mate's house and copy files on and off it from his PC as well.

The big disadvantage of an external drive is too many people see it as a "backup" drive. They then copy all their important files to it. Fill it with music, films, pr0n, important docs, photos, etc.

Then they manage to knock it off of the desk and smash it on the floor!!! Suddenly the story of "putting all your eggs in one basket" comes to mind....

(Seen this happen tooo many times now....)


If you are technical, then opening up the PC and adding a drive is easy. If you are scared of a screw driver and don't know what slave/master settings are, then an external hard drive is for you. True plug and play there. :)
 
thx for replies
i just want the externel hardive, to put prorames on such as limewire and bitorrent than i can just plg the drive in on any ones computor and start downloading songs. Is that possible to put lmewire and such programs on a externl hardrive :confused:
 
Once you have installed Limewire as normal, go and look into the options pages for it and you will find in here that you can move the location of your "Shared Folder" over to your external hard disk. This will then allow you to carry the collection to your friends house.
 
Some programs are designed to be portable, such as uTorrent and some versions of Firefox, allowing you to install them to a removable drive and use it on any PC.

Many, if not any, program will install to an external drive, but you won't be able to use it on a PC other than the one you installed from, since that's where the registry information sits.
 
At the very least - you can _store_ the downloaded music on the external hard disk. This just means that when you take it to your mates house, it will only include those files that have been fully downloaded. Anything "in progress" will still be sitting on your home PC. Along with the program itself and the list of items it is currently downloading :)
 
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