Q about my aging Win 7 Dell

[Lurch]

Hi,

I've been running this Dell dual Core PC for about 5 years every day and I'm afraid it might up and die on me one of these days. It runs good and I've used Spybot and other things to keep the crap off it. I use it mostly for facebook and buying and selling on amazon and eBay. I have not reformatted the HD in years. I was thinking of saving my stuff and just using my other Dell dual core with Win XP or even getting something newer and just getting rid of this one. What should I do with it? Thanks for any input.

[Ken]

Zip drives are cheap now, just back your stuff up and ride it into the ground. It doesn't take a super computer to go online, just about any will work, especially if you only Facebook, eBay and such. Change your passwords often and don't do any banking on it. You can use Chrome as your browser...

[Lurch]

Thanks. I have a 500 GB WD external drive. I'm not sure if it's a zip drive or not. It's about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

If I back up my PC on it, and my PC dies, does that mean I can copy Win 7 onto a new hard drive on this or some other PC?

[YeOldeStonecat]

Thanks. I have a 500 GB WD external drive. I'm not sure if it's a zip drive or not. It's about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

If I back up my PC on it, and my PC dies, does that mean I can copy Win 7 onto a new hard drive on this or some other PC?

Some external USB drives like your WD Passport come with backup software that can take an "image" of your whole drive, which makes for an easy install if you need. Or there is 3rd party software, lots of which are free, which will do this. Macrium, Aomie, Acronis, etc. Or even Win7 backup.

An easy way to stretch the life of a computer is to replace its hard drive. Since the hard drive is likely the first part to fail, and as they age they slow down in performance. Pickup a Crucial SSD and clone over your current drive to it, swap 'em, and enjoy a zippy PC with a renewed life.

[Lurch]

Interesting. I'll look into that. Thank you.

[Lurch]

If I get a Crucial SSD, would I have to install it as a slave drive? I have 2 HDs now.

[Lurch]

With my WD Elements external drive, when I back up my PC it backs up all the photo files and everything, is that right? I had copied many photo folders to the WD drive but I have a feeling I can delete them as the backup with include all that. Is that right?

[Lurch]

I'm thinking of getting this one.

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct275mx300ssd1

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah we use Crucials drive...the mid model.

Crucial also sells a migration kit, has a full version of Acronis. Clones over your entire existing drive to the SSD...and then you power down, remove old drive, move SSD to that primary drive controller...boot up, reboot twice, done. Everything is right there as it was before, except it runs wicked fast now. Just cloned 3x laptops today to Crucial SSDs for a client.

[Dekook]

Installing a version of windows 7 from an exsternal hard drive should work,It all depends upon were your window 7 instalation actully comes from originally.If the copy of window 7 was copyed from an instalation disc,and you use the registation code off the disc to activate it,When you activate it,to enable it to become a legal copy of windows 7,it will count as 1 credit/install off the maximin amount of installs your allowed off a disc,I think your allowed to install a maxamum of 4 installs(4 seperate installs to 4 seperate computers)from an instalation disc but im not 100% sure,I hope this helps.

[Lurch]

Thanks. I bought a SanDisk 240 GB SSD at Best Buy for $70. I'm waiting for a USB to SATA cable to arrive. SanDisk's site has a one time use of cloning software.

[Lurch]

Hi there. I thought I'd update this post. I bought the SanDisk SSD Plus 240 GB SSD on 8/26. Today I finally got it installed. I bought a 3.0 USB to SATA cable online that came in a few days ago. I found a ph # on SanDisk's site and they guided me through it. I got a 1 time use of Apricorn cloning software and it took 40 minutes to clone onto the SSD. Then I installed the SSD into a 2.5 to 3.5 bracket and took out the SATA HD. Anyway, the PC ran great ever since. It's good to see that my online browsing has sped up also. Pages load faster. I stil have the SATA secondary 160 GB HD in there. Plus I have a 500 GB zip drive.

I found out that Win 7 is always SATA HD. My other Dell PC has Win XP so I guess that's obsolete.