I'm going to put a 2nd hard drive (around 15GB, + or -) in my P3/1000/20/256 Deskpro, to use to backup to.
For this purpose, will ANY old hard drive do? I just realized I know nothing about them. Will laptop harddrives work in a Desktop? Are used hard drives OK if they aren't near death?

Thanks for any input

Yep, any HD that ain't dead or near dead.

A laptop drive will require an adapter.

M2

Possibly used is better. They have usually been tested for a couple of years.

New hard drives arn't nearly as reliable as new hard drives were a few years ago. Way cheaper though!

Notebook HDDs attract a sizable premium. To the extent that you may four times as much for the same capacity. Then as M2 pointed out, you'll then need to buy an adaptor to make it fit.

I suggest that you consider an External Harddrive. Many of the causes that require a restore of data can affect any drive installed in the system. If you use an external HD or better yet, backup to optical media, you will be safer. In order to protect the data on the external drive you shouldn't leave the drive always connected.

Thanks for all this.

I see the advantage of the external drive, but it seems that they are much more expensive, and hard to find used. Still, if the data is valuable, maybe it is worth it.

hmmmmmmmm.... [brain slowly ticking...]

Another project is that I need to transfer all my data & programmes (about 1 GB) from box A to the new Box B (home to office.) It seems to me that the external drive would be a good way to accomplish THAT - and then I could use the external drive for backup.

eh?

Buy a cheap plastic external IDE to USB case (37.00) and a used 20gb to 40gb drive (30.00) and it will do just fine. I do this once a week on an external scsi drive )NOT cheap)!

If you are in the USA watch the ads at Officemax, Bestbuy, Circuitcity, CompUSA. These folks have something on sale every week. Right now in my area Bestbuy has a 160 GB WD External for $150 with an additional $30 mail-in rebate. I would recommend you spend a few dollars more and buy the package instead of assembling your own. There can be inherent problems with doing that. These drives are not mature yet and the fact that many of them work with both USB and firewire ports complicates matters more. There are controller circuits built into the enclosure as well as the HD itself. For seemless use get on that is pre-assembled. Also, not all of these external drives are bootable, even if the host machine's BIOS can be set to boot to USB drive. You need to check. By the way, in tests the firewire out performed the USB 2.0 even though USB 2.0 is theoretically faster. USB 2.0 = 480MB/sec/ firewire(1394) 400MB/sec. Both work well though. If I were shopping I would get a unit that supports both. Hope this helps.

You might consider a DVD writer.

Again, Thanks for all this.

"Buy a cheap plastic external IDE to USB case (37.00) and a used 20gb to 40gb drive (30.00) and it will do just fine."

This is the direction I seem to have fallen into.

This enclosure: http://www.directron.com/nst355u2.html

is the NexStar, NST-355U2.

Now, the NXT-350U2, one step down, is several dollars cheaper, but the 355 has a certain kind of cradle, which is a said to "Dampen Hard Drive vibration." Is that an issue for an external enclosure with a 20 gig drive stuck in it? Does vibration matter?

yes as vibration can cause hd heads to touch platters causing damage(bad spots) on platters

david

Thanks, ddp. The 355 it is.

Thanks, everyone. Mission accomplished.

[Stay tuned for 'backup sofware' threads. :<) ]