I'm attempting to create more space on my hard drive to install a rather large program that will eat up about 20% of my disk space, but I'm at a point where I can't delete much more. My uncle told me about a thing called an external hard drive that can be plugged into a vacant USB port. I've never heard of such a thing, which is why I brought these questions here. Does such a thing exist? And if so, is it something that I can pick up at a local Radio Shack, or is it of greater rarity?

I'd appreciate absolutely any help on this, because at this point, I'm faced with the decision of whether or not to get rid of all my music files in order to make room for this program >.<

It's called an external drive and it's readily available in many capacities. However, if you're looking to use it with the computer in your sig then you would probably be better off with just adding another internal drive. Reason being is that you almost certainly have USB 1.0 and it will be a drag for large data transfers. And adding another internal drive is pretty simple. The documents that came with your compaq should have instructions for doing this. If not then ask further and we'll explain. (plus it's a lot cheaper to go this route)

FYI, most PCs can handle 4 internal drives. There are two controllers on the motherboard. Each controller's cable can connect to 2 drives, either hard drives or CD/DVD drives. So it's pretty sure that you can connect another drive. The only question might be a place to physically insert the drive. If you have an empty bay, there is not problem. If you do not have an empty bay there is the option of putting it in a place where it would not normally go, insuring that it would get proper cooling and not short anything out.

I'll agree. An external USB drive is a notebook drive fitted to a portable case. As such it does the same thing as an internal drive but at about three times the cost. It does have the advantage of portability.

As you have a pentium without a number behind it, it is likely that you indeed do have USB 1.0. USB 2.0 drives are generally backward compatible to USB 1.1, not so 1.0. You have the option of adding a USB 2.0 expansion card to get such a drive to work. Yet more cost.

Another consideration to remember is your motherboard probably will not recognise a drive larger than 8GB. You can only buy such drives second hand as they have not been made for a few years. The external USB solution will get around this limitation. Then Windows 98 will limit you to a 120GB drive.

Usb is a royal pain on older pc's and really slow. Even 2.0 usb doesn't work right ofetn between needing at least Sp1 and a motherboard that can work with it, even then there are driver issues.
look into a firewire (called 1394 in Windows) and a firewire external drive. No driver headaches, they always work and are as fast as usb 2.0. You also need a simple addon pci card for 1394 also.

I am unsure what type of USB card I have in my computer...because my computer did not originally come with the card in it; I purchased one last summer because I was attempting to hook up a scanner (which was far too powerful for my computer to support).

But you guys brought up the idea of another internal drive. I was considering this same idea a few months back, but I was told that the installation of another drive would delete all my files, so I withheld on my decision.

But maybe your guys can explain to me how to put in an internal drive...is this something I can find at any computer store? Do I need a particular brand or model or what-not to suit my crappy computer? Do I need to totally dissect my computer to install it, or must I have someone do it for me?

I do not have any instructions whatsoever for my computer, so I haven't a clue where to begin.

I thank you guys all for your help - I appreciate it very much. But I am in need of further advice if anyone can offer it to me.

Adding another internal drive is usaully quite easy providing you have somewhere to mount it and a spare IDE plug. A spare bay may be a problem on some of the smaller cases. You usually have two IDE cables which each accommodate two drives.

Installing a second drive will not delete any files. The only way this can happen is if you format the wrong drive. Your existing drive will be known to dos and windows as C:, do not format this one!

As I mentioned earlier, your computer will most likely only recognise a 8GB hard drive. You should be able to find a good used one of these fairly cheaply. You won't find a new one this small.

As far as fitting it, does four screws and two plug sound overly complicated?

Stick with the external drive, I mean to do this you have to know if you have room to mount the drive, a cable with an extra plug, jumper one as salve and one as master, this really isn't for someone who really is not familiar with the insde of the case.

Do a Google search for "how to install a second hard drive".
You will find a few sites that will help.

It's really not very hard, but maybe you could find someone to help you.

It basically consists of finding a place to install the drive.
Plug a jumper to make it Master or Slave.
Connect it to a large ribbon cable
Connect a small power cable
Enter the PCs bios to have it detect the new drive
Partition the drive with fdisk
Format the drive
And it's ready to go

You can install a drive that is larger than 8gb by downloading what is called an 'overlay' program from the hard drive manufactirer's web site It's not the ideal solution, but it does work.