I'm looking at adding a second HDD, mostly for back up and a couple of accounting programs.

Would I be better off getting a USB external drive? or is there some way I work out what sort of drive I need to purchase for internal fitting?

I have an 80 Gig drive installed and not at all sure how I would connect a second HDD, or more important what type to buy, the existing drive is a 7500 rpm 3.5 inch.
Any guidance would help.

Avagoodweekend......

Firstly, an internal drive would transfer data quicker.
Open up your pc, first you will need space for a 3.5 inch drive, you will need a fitting kit of some sort, to mount it in the bay.
If you have a grey flat ribbon cable going to your other drive it is PATA (IDE). There will also be a small plastic connector with about 5-6 wires yellow, red, black. There will probably be a spare one of these.You might need to get another ribbon cable to connect to the motherboard. If you get another internal drive & you want use it for backup, you will need to put a link (jumper) in to make it a slave.
So physically mount the drive in the bay, connect the ribbon cable to the drive & motherboard, connect the power lead,set the link to slave. On boot up, windows should see the new drive. Go to disk management in windows & format it.

Its the same if you have a SATA drive, the cables are different.

A usb drive should just be plug & play.

Thanks for that Clive, just what I was looking for.

Great site this
Thanks Again Clive.

Avagoodweekend......