Spare Harddrive?
Tue, 5 September, 2006 – 11:15 pm
I upgraded my main laptop harddrive last year from a 20gb drive to a 40gb one. I didn't need the extra space but I wanted a faster drive. Anyhow, the 20gb drive has been sitting in a nice little static free bag for the past 18 months doing nothing. Last week Paul's laptop died and so I took a look on Scan for a new harddrive for him as his old one had corrupted. Whilst on there I decided to look up a 2.5" harddrive caddy as well to see how much they were. At £8.99 I suddenly realised I could maybe make use of this spare drive.
Martin had already mentioned to me about his caddy for his spare laptop drive, but at the time it didn't dawn on me how handy it would be. I already have an external USB drive, however the caddy doesn't require a power supply. It's the same size of a PDA and just needs the USB lead. Suddenly I had a thought about it and realised that I could use my harddrive as a portable computer for going away on business or to visit clients.
I've put on a portable version of Firefox and FileZilla. I've also extracted a copy of XXAMP onto it, which doesn't require installing (XXAMP is Apache, MySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin). This means if I go away on business or need to visit a client I can essentially have a web server in my bag that will work via a USB connection. Okay whilst it's not a necessity it does mean I can put my work onto it and take it down to my parents when I go down there, and nab my Mum's laptop. It also means that I can use it on two different laptops (of which I have) when I really need to.
At £8.99 I feel daft for not doing this earlier, however for anyone with a spare drive, look up a price for a caddy for it (yes you can get them for normal sized drives too). It will come in handy for backing up or using as a portable harddrive to run your programs on (just think office works, you can put firefox on it and plug it into your work machine!).
Related Links:
Scan
Portable Apps
2 Responses to “Spare Harddrive?”
its a fair idea if you have a hdd lying around, but Ive just got a 2GB USB pen through work, i never use that, but Im sure it would be enough
Saying that, I use a USB HDD for backing up and moving music to work and back, at 60GB of music its very easy!
By Matt on Sep 6, 2006
Oh yeah, if you have a pen drive already then it's probably not something you need, however I don't. But it's good to have that extra capacity as I know I can copy pretty much anything I need to. Also XXAMP took up over 300mb of the space!
By Sarah on Sep 6, 2006