Can external hard drive be used for full internal hard drive?

[sistersin]

I earlier posted about the Aspire AST690-UP925A having 250GB hard drive. I since then contacted Aspire chat support. Apparently, not being tech savy we didn't realize 250 gb hard drive only 112 c drive is able to be used, the d data drive holds the programs to run the computer.

I didn't mean can I use the external hard drive internally. I meant, if I hook it up externally would it work in place of the internal hard drive that is nearly full except for around 10 GB?

So, unfortunately the computer isn't as big as you believe. But...I wanted to know if I purchase (I was looking at western digital elements 2TB external hard drive). Can we use it for this computer. It will not run itunes or anything like that, but we can obviously go online.

My brother wants to buy a new computer, but I know that is probably not the way to go. Should we get an internal hard drive installed and other memory or something or can we use the external hard drive?

I would appreciate any informed help on this since we do not no technical info on computers. Can't really afford to buy another computer right now.

Thanks in advance

 

[Luthfi]

If you want to take out the drive from external hard drive case and install it in your desktop/laptop, then usually you can. Usually external hard drives are just ordinary hard drives accompanied by some extra controller to make it able to "talk" via general ports (e.g. USB). However I am not familiar with digital elements 2TB , so I can not confirm it. But I do have WD external drive, which I had positively confirm that its real drive is just ordinary hard drive.

Note that if you decide to do this, I suggest to find experience people to work on extracting the drive. If you do it yourself you will risk to damage it, and you don't want that since usually opening the closure means voiding the warranty.

 

[nismo91]

you can do that. i bought a seagate expansion 1TB (3.5inch), opened it shell, and put the harddisk inside my desktop PC.

there's something you need to double-check, that is whether you have any free SATA ports in your motherboard. that's because the new harddisk are gonna be plugged into that SATA port.

once everything is confirmed ready, you just need to buy a bare harddisk (or an external one, at additional price) and insert the harddisk into the casing. there are just 2 cables to plug to.

if you decided to do this, your computer will perform exactly the same as how it used to be. it's just an expansion of storage.