How do I transfer from my Internal Hard Drive on my laptop to a 160 GB External Hard Drive?
I am trying to make my Laptop run faster and so I went and got a Western Digital 160 GB Hard drive, but now I can't transfer anything because I don't know how to. Can someone walk me thru it please?
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Posted in: 160GB External Hard Drive
5 Responses
Red M - November 18, 2009
If it is external hard drive it should have come with a usb cable. If so, just plug it in your usb port and then check your explorer (right click on start, choose explorer) and look and see if there is a new drive (for example mine is “E”). If there is just move everything to the new drive.
adam d - November 18, 2009
When you plug in your external harddrive, goto your “My computer” Icon. In there it should pop up your external harddrive. Basically all you need to do it Click and drag the stuff you want to put on your external harddrive. Or cut something. Go into your external harddrive and paste. There isn’t very much work to it.
Hope it works for you
supercoop922 - November 18, 2009
Well, generally “running faster” has little to do with hard drive usage, unless your internal is nearly full. In any case, here’s how you do it.
First, find the large files (could be music, videos, pictures, etc. . . )
These will be what you will want to move.
Second, if you’ve got a modern laptop by any means (Windows XP or higher), you external should be plug and play. You will first need to format it. I’d say, if you hdd came with a cd, pop it in, and follow the instructions on formating.
If there isn’t one, plug it up, right click my computer, manage, storage, removable storage. Select your device. Right click, and you can do a quick format and partition. I recommend NTSC and 1 partition of 160gb.
Now, this hdd acts as another recognized drive when plugged in. You can right click start and goto explore, or use the interfacing in My Computer to see the contents of your new HDD. Well, if you have these movies, pictures, and/or music selected, all you have to do is drag/drop to your new drive, and it will copy it over.
OR, you can right click, cut/copy, paste to new destination.
When you’re finished and wish to remove the HDD, remember to go to the bottom right hand corner of the screen and safely remove hardware.
Remember, doing this will make your computer faster ONLY if your internal hard drive is nearly full. If you want other ideas as to making it faster, see RAM expansion, processor speed, running programs, etc. . .
Ron H - November 18, 2009
You can do an image transfer over the USB. You will need to buy a external carrier for the 160GB drive. I use a Symantec program (Norton Ghost). You will need to copy the boot sector. Also copy empty sectors because many programs stop working if you don’t.
Please note that Microsoft may stop working. The new authentication suite reads the serial number of the drive. They will allow you to change it some number of times.
I use this as a back-up method but I do not swap the drive each time because of Microsoft.
Musikman - November 18, 2009
You have to plug in the external drive via USB wire from the drive to a USB port on your laptop.
Once you plug it in, your laptop will automatically detect it.
Double click on MY COMPUTER and the external drive should be listed.
Take whatever files you want OFF OF your laptop and drag them to the external drive.
CAUTION: I wouldn’t move any WINDOWS operating files or any files in the PROGRAM FILES folder if I were you. I’m talking about moving ONLY files and folders you’ve created.
i. e. – Folders with documents, music, pictures, videos, etc etc. all should be OK to move to the new drive. Then delete them from your laptop’s hard rive and also EMPTY your RECYCLING BIN when your done deleting files.
IMPORTANT: Once you’re done transferring your files from the laptop to the external drive, run a DISK DEFRAGMENT on your laptop. This will help speed up your laptop significantly.
Hope this helps. Good luck!