1. Yes. The data transfer speed might be a bit lower, though.
2. Yes, you can. No, I don't think it will defeat the purpose (unless you intend to run programs from it, which I don't think it's meant for).

In short:

1. Yes. You'll just get a message telling you that things would be zippier if you had USB2.

2. There is not reason not to leave it plugged in if you have no need to tote your data about. However, the addition of the drive won't make your computing experience speedier.

3. I've had good luck with Seagate drives. You've made a fine choice, in my opinion. Make sure you send your warranty card in and enjoy all the new space!

jan I've nothing much to add to the excellent responses you've gotten except to say that I love my external HD. I have my music and photo libraries on it and it's made all the difference for me in being able to download and keep large reams of stuff.

my mac has a 100gb HD - since I've partitioned it 70/30 to run bootcamp, the external is a great resource for cross-platform usage. OSX can read and use pretty much everything I use on there so when I'm done working with something (i.e. photos) on the XP side, I drop it into my external libraries.

the one caveat I will give you on buying large storage devices: it means you must get organised about how you archive / name stuff. but that's not all that difficult.

Thanks everyone. lonefrontranger, your middle paragraph might as well be written in Cantonese for all the sense it makes to me, heh.

I have always had issues with USB 2 plugged into an older motherboard, ranging from hardware conflicts and hanging to crashes and very slow performance. May I suggest one of the devices on this page, (the first item looks like it would work fine), install it yourself - it's very easy - and gain all the advantages of USB 2.0 and Firewire interfaces?

That's a nice drive.

If your hard drive isn't anywhere near full, then adding an external drive won't of course speed anything up. The RAM would have made a noticable difference, so don't expect anything like that this time. Daniel Charms says "The data transfer speed might be a bit lower", but what he doesn't say is that it will be 40 times slower. Or looking at it another way, if you upgrade to USB2, it will be 40 times faster.

PC World have a couple of USB cards and a combined USB / Firewire card. The latter would really only be useful if you have something like a camcorder or an older iPod that has a firewire interface. The cards are really easy to install, but if you don't feel confident doing it, that just means they should be really cheap and quick to install.

Almost everything you could plug into your computer these days comes with a USB interface. You've probably got a few USB devices attached right now. Getting those to work 40 times faster will make a big difference to how your computer runs. I'd seriously think about moving to USB2 when you get the new drive.

Ok, preview isn't just for checking one's spelling, is it? I should scroll up occasionally. What disclaimer said.

GeckoDundee: I somehow assumed that it was something like 10X :7 Oh well, at least I got the order of magnitude part right...

Thanks guys. It would totally freak me out to try to install a new USB card. Truly. I would have no clue how to do it, so I'll stick with just clearing some space on my PC's hard drive and archiving it onto an external HD. And yes, all pictures are backed up. The music isn't backed up, but there's nothing I couldn't find again if I wanted to.

You should really get the USB2 card though. Pay someone to install it for you; it should take them maybe ten minutes. I don't know about Dixons, Curry's or the like, but Harvey Norman here (which is the equivalent and apparently spreading from Ireland to the UK soon) will do it while you wait when you buy the card from them. If PC World have bricks & mortar shops, they'll probably do it. Phone first of course, but you should be able to take the box in and have them install the card. Or take the box to work and have someone in IT install the card for a small bribe.

Just had a look around. It seems PC World *are* Dixons who *are* Currys. Ain't competition grand? It also seems they charge 30 quid to install stuff at the shop and 50 quid if they come to you. Ouch.

I like to type, it would appear. I was just thinking that you might need either a network card or a USB2 card for your new router.

The back of the PC box should have a socket like your ethernet socket at work. If it doesn't, you'll need a card. Why? Because your new router will have to connect via either an ethernet connection or (you guessed it), a USB one. USB 1.1 will only allow 12 megabits per second, which is 1.5 megabytes per second. (Unlike the 480Mb/s = 60MB/s which USB2 can handle). So you should check with your ISP to see if your new broadband will require USB2 anyway.

Some modems only have USB, not ethernet. Any existing network card in your PC might be old enough to cause a bottleneck anyway.

My puter is old and has only 2 USB ports on the back, side by side. One is connected to a 4-port hub from which I run the printer and plug in other peripherals (e.g. memory card reader) as and when needed), and the other to the USB modem. The one used for the modem will soon be spare when I get my new ADSL router. The router is not USB, I don't think. There is no space on the front of the computer to install any new USB ports - the slots that are there are occupied by CD Re-writer, DVD drive and Floppy drive. The USB ports at the back are fairly inaccessible, which I understand is common in older computers, so Google tells me.

It's no big deal. This machine is positively prehistoric by computer standards, but it'll do me for a while yet.