Hi! I'm planning to buy a 40gig portable harddisk. It will be used to store music, pictures and videos on different OS, like win98, ME, XP and linux. Should I still install an OS in the harddisk? What about drivers? What are the necessary applications that I should install? Do I have to partition it? As a first time portable harddisk user, what should I always consider? Please help me in detail but not too technical. Thanks. :-)

penzzzzz

If you are simply going to use it as a storage device to be plugged in to a variety of different systems then you do not instal an operating system. Since you want to use it on systems running 9x windows as well as later operating systems you will need to have it partitioned as FAT32. I do not know enough about linux to tell whether a linux based system will play nice with a FAT drive. As to whether you should "Instal" any software programs on such a drive, probably not. You are dealing with a storage device here not something that will be bootable. What kind of files do you expect to store on it that most users won't already have software capable of running? One final word of caution. Do not store anything on such a drive that you cannot afford to lose

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Thanks.
Well, I think I'll also be storing pdf files. Btw, do I still have to install an antivirus? And also, how do I partition it with FAT32?? :-)

penzzzzz

If your buying the drive from a store it's bound to come with disc's and a manual.

If not you may just be able to plug into your XP box and format it from there.

Little hint, once drive is plugged into XP Right click on my computer, select manage. Once computer management box is open select disk management. Your external drive should show up there. You can then partition and format as you like. Any aditional help check the help file.

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