external hard drive help

[Monsieur]

I'm getting fed up with my computer running slow because of the kids games strored on the hard drive - several sims 2 games.
I've heard about external hard drives...could their games be downloaded onto this drive so that the main hard drive is kept clear?
Is it as easy as this - download their games onto the external hard drive and then just plug it it whenever they want to play and then unplug the drive when they have finished?
If so, do you know of any good deals at the moment? I'd be looking for about a 40-80 gb drive
Many thanks

 

[Steve B]

I'm getting fed up with my computer running slow because of the kids games strored on the hard drive - several sims 2 games.
I've heard about external hard drives...could their games be downloaded onto this drive so that the main hard drive is kept clear?
Is it as easy as this - download their games onto the external hard drive and then just plug it it whenever they want to play and then unplug the drive when they have finished?
If so, do you know of any good deals at the moment? I'd be looking for about a 40-80 gb drive
Many thanks

If you can do this I got a 250Gb hard drive from PC World for £79.99 last year. I noticed onTV they are advertising a 400Gb!!!! for £85. It's also very useful for storing all the digital photos that we now take in abundance.
Do a search on the PC World website. I know the units are popular. Took me visits to 3 different stores to find one.

Steve

PS
I DO like your avatar

 

[Fanum]

You can't just'download' them onto another drive, you'd have to install them there, or the registry (always on the c drive) wouldn't know where to 'look'....but as long as you have the iunstall discs, it's as easy as whacking those in the box and telling the 'puter to install them on the new drive (which will probably be 'E' if you have one DVD/CD drive, or 'F' If you have two.

It's not worth getting a drive as small as that really either.......you can get a 250gb external USB drive for around £85 and you'll soon find that you'll fill it with games and movies/music etc.

If it's USB2, you can literally just plug it in, even with the PC on and running, then start the games as normal, then unplug it when you don't want it on.

Incidentally, it's unlikely that it's things like the Sims games on the original drive slowing it down, unless the disc is so full it's causing page swap errors....you'll probably find it's accumulated crap and junk files plus stuff the rugrats have downloaded etc

 

[(RIP) Proff]

Recommended dealer

I've had 4 External Hard drives 1x160, and 3 x300 gig plus a 320gig external media player.
Brilliant prices. Top service and you can get them if something goes wrong by email or phone { Janette is a great help]{ I had a power supply fail @ 10 months. No prob got new one in post next day
http://www.envizage.com/

Price at the moment for a 320 gig FAN COOLED [essential} for £62.71p plus £8.50 courier delivery


PS. feel free to mention my name>> Keith Stevenson from Devon

 

[ianf]

If you have XP/2000/anything with ntfs installed, you can move install dirs over to another disk.

i.e. copy c:/garmin to d:/garmin and then use the sysinternals tool 'junction' to make a soft link in c:/ to point to d:/garmin. I'd recommend renaming c:/garmin c:/old_garmin before you add the link.

Saves pissing about with registry stuff. Not for rank amateurs, but try it on some harmless directories first to get the idea.