Upgrading storage on refurbished laptop

[worthbillions]

Hi:

I bought a refurbished laptop computer which I thought had 160 gigs on the hard drive but it only had 29 gigs so I took it back. However I am still looking for a refurbished hard drive and want to know if I can use an external hard drive with greater gigs which would not damage it.

Thanks

 

[raybay]

Yes, you can.
You have to assure that the working hard drive, for normal purposes, has at least 18 percent of the drive free for full operational work... it can be done with less, but the smaller the free space, the greater the problems. Of course, available memory is also a major part of the job.
New hard drives are now available for under $45 now.
You didn't mention the brand and model. nor the brand and date code of the hard drive. SATA or EIDE? Replacing or perhaps just reformatting and reinstalling your operating system on the hard drive may change your outlook on that drive.

 

[worthbillions]

I just want to know if I can use the external hard drive with a refurbished laptop dell which only has 29 gigs on it without damaging the laptop.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Yes, you can.

Something's wrong it you only have 29 gb in case you're interested.

 

[worthbillions]

The external hard drive is 250 gigs but the refurbished laptop is 29 gigs. I want to use the external hard drive so that I have more space. I just want to know if the external hard drive will damage the laptop.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

You want it said again?

Yes, you can.

 

[mailpup]

To be fair worthbillions asked a slightly different question in his last post so the answer would be: No, it won't.

 

[LookinAround]

You have to assure that the working hard drive, for normal purposes, has at least 18 percent of the drive free for full operational work... it can be done with less, but the smaller the free space, the greater the problems.

No, no, no....

Raybay continues to repeat the same falsehoods. (Altho now i see he claims 18% free vs. used to claim 15% free for everything).. Let's see on a 250GB disk that means you need 45GB freespace? OMG!! How about a 500GB, he'd want you to have 90GB free. YIKES!!!! I think someone is in the business of selling hard drives :suspiciou

The facts are:

• XP required 15% free but ONLY for the Windows degragger to fully defrag. (Windows, itself, will othewiserun fine with just 5 GB free - and that number is still generous!)
• Vista and Win7 defraggers were re-designed and don't have that same limitation
• You can also use a variety of freeware defraggers (like from Auslogics) that work fine with just 2-3% free space or less!

Moral of the story: Don't waste unneeded disk space based on "old wive's tales" and falsehoods

/* edit */
btw,,, XP, itself, never even bothered to give you "Low Disk Space" warnings till you fell to around 500MB! So go figure! :haha: