[Ham-Computers] RE: Assistance With Music Downloads

Hsu, Aaron [email protected]
Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:01:29 -0800


Duane,

The easiest and quickest way to solve the drive capacity problem is to add
another HD.  Office Depot, Staples, CompUSA, Circuit City, Best Buy, and
other national chains often have tremendous mail-in rebates on hard drives.
I recently saw advertised an internal 250GB HD for $119 after the various
rebates.  Local computer shops may have OEM drives (no box) for the same
amount without the rebate hassle.  In essence, they're cheap and plentiful.

External USB drives are the easiest to install and most convenient.
Pre-packaged USB hard drives can be found for under $200.  They generally
average about $50 higher than the cost of a bare drive alone.  If your
friend is running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, then the whole installation is
"Plug-n-Play" - just plug it in and it will show up and a new drive.
Windows 98 Second Edition will support USB drives, but will require vendor
supplied drivers.  Earlier versions of Windows may not be supported.

Bare (aka "internal") drives are less expensive (especially after all the
rebates), but require some technical knowledge to install.  One also needs
to check to see if the computer supports the full drive capacity of the new
drive.  Drive "overlays" or a plug-in ATA 100/133 controller may be needed
in these cases (some drives now ship with a free controller!).  The main
advantage is the lower cost (which may be offset if professional
installation is needed).  Another advantage is the internal
installation...nothing external to worry about (aka no "wall wart" power
supply).

Direct download to CD-R requires "Packet Writing" (aka DirectCD or UDF)
which is not very well supported.  It is also quite prone to write errors
which render the CD unreadable.  Most experts recommended that people stay
away from Packet Writing and stick with the traditional single-session CD-R
creation method.  With this in mind, it's not as simple for your friend as
adding another hard drive.

73 and hope it's warming up in MI!

  - Aaron Hsu, NN6O


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