Rixta,
I suggest getting an external disk that has both USB and eSATA
connections, and be sure your new box has an eSATA plug. (That stands
for "external SATA"). That would allow you to back up your files by a
simple copy using the USB 2 interface on your old box, then connect at
much higher speed with the new one.
The upcoming USB 3 stuff is quite nice, too--and is supposed to be
backwards compatible with the USB 2 you already have. That would also
work, but you may have to pay something of a premium just now for an
external drive or drive enclosure with USB3--and it isn't on that many
new machines yet. Expect to see it mushrooming in popularity in the
coming months, though.
If your box will be all Linux, you can format the external drive that
way, but most of them retain a Windows format to be compatible with
those machines as well. My external drive was formatted as an NTFS
drive with two partitions--
few weeks ago and I reformatted one of them after installing it in the
laptop. The second, NTFS partition with my backup files is still there
and fully accessible from the Linux OS that way.
Since I will replace this machine in by Summer, I will also replace
the external drive at that time.
If your new machine comes with Windows pre-installed, you'll have to
determine if you will make the system a dual boot arrangement or scrub
the Windows setup entirely. Either should be quite easy to do when you
install a modern Linux distro.
Good luck!
David
No comments:
Post a Comment