Upgrading Storage Space

[fishj123]

Hi Guys,

Right now I have a 500GB hard drive in my PC but I'm running out of space so I think I'm going to upgrade to 2tb. Do you think I should get an internal hard drive or buy an external portable hard drive?

My main concern with a portable hard drive is that I heard my steam games might run slower if I installed them to a portable hard drive, is that true?

Also is it possible to have two internal hard drives installed at once and use both? Because that would save me the hassle of transferring files from one hard drive to the other.

Thanks.

 

[manofchalk]

Internal, for that very performance reason.
You can have as many HDD's in your computer as there are SATA ports.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Internal, for that very performance reason.
You can have as many HDD's in your computer as there are SATA ports.

...and empty drive bays to hold the drives.

@OP: If you don't have the space for another internal drive, you can just clone your existing drive to a new larger drive.

 

[manofchalk]

But then what is double sided velcro for? :lol:

 

[fishj123]

Internal, for that very performance reason.
You can have as many HDD's in your computer as there are SATA ports.

Ok thanks. Not sure how to tell how many ports my pc has but I guess its pretty obvious if I open up the case?

 

[fishj123]

Internal, for that very performance reason.
You can have as many HDD's in your computer as there are SATA ports.

...and empty drive bays to hold the drives.

@OP: If you don't have the space for another internal drive, you can just clone your existing drive to a new larger drive.

How exactly do I clone my existing one to a new one?

 

[manofchalk]

Yup, more than likely the SATA ports will be down the bottom right of the motherboard.

They look like this (blue things).

 

[Hawkeye22]

Internal, for that very performance reason.
You can have as many HDD's in your computer as there are SATA ports.

...and empty drive bays to hold the drives.

@OP: If you don't have the space for another internal drive, you can just clone your existing drive to a new larger drive.

How exactly do I clone my existing one to a new one?

With cloning software of course. Use clonezilla or easus. Both are free and work well.

http://clonezilla.org/

http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/home-edition/

 

[fishj123]

Internal, for that very performance reason.
You can have as many HDD's in your computer as there are SATA ports.

...and empty drive bays to hold the drives.

@OP: If you don't have the space for another internal drive, you can just clone your existing drive to a new larger drive.

How exactly do I clone my existing one to a new one?

With cloning software of course. Use clonezilla or easus. Both are free and work well.

http://clonezilla.org/

http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/home-edition/

Thanks for the links, I'm assuming that to use this software both my current hard drive and my new hard drive have to be connected to the PC at the same time so that it can transfer the data?

 

[Hawkeye22]

Thanks for the links, I'm assuming that to use this software both my current hard drive and my new hard drive have to be connected to the PC at the same time so that it can transfer the data?

Not necessarily, but you may still need somewhere to store the image (clone) file before restoring to the new drive. I've never cloned a drive in real time so don't know if that's possible. I usually create an image file, then restore to the new drive.

 

[fishj123]

Thanks for the links, I'm assuming that to use this software both my current hard drive and my new hard drive have to be connected to the PC at the same time so that it can transfer the data?

Not necessarily, but you may still need somewhere to store the image (clone) file before restoring to the new drive. I've never cloned a drive in real time so don't know if that's possible. I usually create an image file, then restore to the new drive.

Right so I've had a look inside my PC and there is room for another Hard drive so should I just have two installed at once? What will that be like? When I go Start > Computer will I see two hard drives and I will be free to install stuff between both? Will it affect the performance of my PC in any way?

 

[Hawkeye22]

Once you have the clone made, just attach it to where the old drive is and move the old one to the next available sata port. Having multiple drives doesn't effect performance. Once you're satisfied that all went well, you can format the old drive if needed and start storing new data/programs on it.

(NOTE: you may have to go into the bios and set the current boot drive.)