Reasons to get or not get a LARGE hard drive?

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The shop I got a refurb desktop computer from says its P4 processors won't like Windows 7, so they won't upgrade it from XP. (Other customers complained about slowness.)

I'm thinking (maybe foolishly) about just getting another refurb, this time WITH 7 already onboard, and moving my files. (This will mean maybe playing with the first one over time to see if it actually can be upgraded to 7. A friend says he'll help.)

The new(er) PC comes with a 160gb drive. A 500gb or even 1tb are options (for more money, naturally). I'd had them put a 500 into the first refurb, but a whole lot of good it did me.

I'm wondering if sticking with the 160gb drive is the smart thing to do, with me getting an external to store everything, making it easier to move to another machine down the road when there's need.

That's the whole story. Which makes more sense? Having them put a 500gb or even 1tb drive in the new machine as I'm buying it, or just sticking with the basic, smaller drive it comes with (no upgrade cost), and using an external for greater storage space?

If you have reasons for going with one or the other, explain why as well, if you don't mind.

I'm convinced there's something here I'm failing to consider.

It really depends on what you're using it for. Cloud storage is readily available and cheap these days, and so are external drives.

When getting hard drives, I get the biggest drive that I can find. The notebook that I'm currently using came (Panasonic Toughbook/LetsNote CF-T8 MkII) came with a 250GB drive. I replaced it with a 1TB hard drive.

It's generally a good thing to have an external, that is the same size, or more than one external that add up to about the same size drive as the one that you plan to install for backup purposes.

I had originally been planning to get a 500GB replacement for this system, but the store, (BestBuy) was out of them and the price of the 1TB drives was only $10 or so more, so you actually wind up getting a better deal on larger drives.

That being said, I have no idea of who makes the best desktop drives these days. Back in the day, IBM DeskStars were the best, then Seagate, but Seagate had issues with their controller firmware after they merged with Maxtor @2k9.

Another route that you can go is to use a small SSD, 64GB or under, as the primary drive for your Operating system with a conventional drive daisychained to it for file storage. --You will get faster performance for booting and loading applications, W/O the price of a large SSD. If you go this route, Intel SSD's are still considered the best as far as reliability is concerned.

Any downside to using an external vs. an onboard drive? Any downside to having one big onboard drive that has your OS and all your files?

The problem with cloud storage is that it's remote, off system storage that you have access to, but ultimately no real control over it. Also, if you need data retrieved but no network access, (like, say your internet cuts out during incliment weather) you're kinda f***ed until network access is restored.

You can use your cellphone as a hotspot if that happens.

1.) Tranfer rate for an external drive is lower than onboard due to USB/Firewire data speeds generally being lower than SATA interface.

2.) The downside to having all data on one drive is that should your system be irreversibly infected by worms, trojans, Viruses, etc, all of your existing saved data is not safe, and will most likely be lost if you have to reformat and reinstall the OS. When installing Windows, you really have no option but to use the entire HD as one partition.

In the best of all possible worlds, I'd do both, but if that's not possible, the external drive is the safest way to protect your data, because it can be unplugged from the system and the Internet when not in use.

160G doesn't seem like a lot of C drive space these days (my iPod has 160G drive in it), but as long as it holds the software you actually use on a daily basis, with enough room to work without slowing down the system, It should be fine.

I would NEVER, under any circumstances keep my personal data (property) in any "cloud," which is to say SOMEBODY ELSE'S hard drive. Why not just give your wallet to a stranger on the subway for safekeeping?

Perhaps, but in the US, there are some carriers who really frown upon rooting and untethering their handsets. --They want you to pay extra for their mobile hotspot service.

As far as large hard drives are concerned, here's my two cents.

1. Large is good, very good. You'd be amazed at how much stuff you can do with lots of onboard storage.

2. Large has a major drawback....issues with the OS (operating system) partition. It's what gets fragmented the fastest and most, and the larger the drive, the longer it takes to defrag and optimize.

So, I've learned to do this....

Get an external drive as large or larger than your computer's HDD, so you have the ability to image all your data for quick recovery.

Use a partition editor to SHRINK the main partition to something reasonable for the OS (usually C drive) to operate on. 100 GB is probably more than enough. Then create a new partition or two on the freed up space which will now appear as additional hard drives, and use that space for storing stuff like music, videos, photos, or even the massive data for installed games.

It will speed up your performance, limit how fragmented the OS partition gets, speed up how fast a defrag/optimization takes, and make it simple to recover a backed up OS partition (less space to replace). Most corrupted data or virus damage will be on the OS partition.

At work, I have had on more than one occasion a HD crash because of temperature of the room (hits 100F on the worst days).

My opinion is spend your money on two medium sized drives AND backup software. Buying top-of-the-line computer equipment is just a waste of money, it gets old so quick. (Don't go cheap on toilet paper, beer, or a battery-backed sump pump).

Right now I am using the paid version of Macrium at work and at home to back up my HD, but many other exist.

I use SystemRescueCD to repartition hard drives using the program 'gparted'. It also has backup software, but last time I used it, it isn't for the faint of heart, especially using that ntfs-3g and mounting.

I don't know if Macrium has a free version still.

I split my first hard drive into partitions, separating program (C:), data to be backed up, and data that will never be backed up (like recorded TV, they can be like 20G), and then some other partitions that I back up once i a while.

Then I split the second HD into a space big enough for a C drive, and the rest is for backups of the first HD. Then I have a place to put an OS if I need to get the computer up and running.

I have a USB HD, but now I just copy files over the network. I have never got around to using the mounted USB drive stuff of DD-WRT on my router.

If you know what you are doing, there's a program on SystemRescueCD called MHDD that can help you predict when a hard drive is going to fail - the magnetic disk kind, not the solid state kind.