dell dimenison 4600 mini tower
30gb harddrive
2 mb memory
cd/cd r/w and read dvd

my computer (event log) is telling me that i have a harddrive problem and need to backup my drive. i thought of trying a second harddrive but, worry about changeing the drive letters for my cd r/w or the r/dvd. so, i am asking if someone can tell me what type of EXTERNAL drive i should get. i a leaning towards the type of houseing that will allow me to change the harddrives in it. i know nothing about the new USB 2.0 externals.

THANKS for your help.

tazpaigeYou should get an external hard drive enclosure kit if you plan on switching around the hard drives as the externals. Otherwise, just get an external hard drive. I believe that you can boot from an external USB hard drive by changing the settings in the BIOS.An earlier post i was involved with by someone other than myself if i remember correctly stated that one could NOT boot from an external drive for the O/S XP.truenorth Ok sorry I got confused with something else. Quote from: truenorth on September 16, 2007, 04:33:47 PM

An earlier post i was involved with by someone other than myself if i remember correctly stated that one could NOT boot from an external drive for the O/S XP.truenorth