Question: What's the best way to expand storage space on a tiny computer? I have a three year old Dell Latitude x300 with only 27 gb available on the hard drive, and I'm running out of space for all my music. What is the best option for storing more files than I currently have room for? I'm on a student budget.

Answer: There's a lot of ways, I'm sure you'll get alot of answers, so here are a few:\n\n1) External USB hard drive\n-- this is the easiest way, IMHO.  All you do is plug it into the wall, plug it into the USB port, and you are done!  You can get an 80GB drive for less than $100.  Also, you can easily bring your HD to another computer, at work for instance.  The downside is transfer rates.  If you have a old computer, it might only support USB1.0, which will be slower than 2.0 (USB2.0 devices will work with USB1.0, but data transfer will be slower).  USB1.0 is fine for reading MP3's, but it will be a little slow when transfering large amounts of data back and forth.  (Looking at the specs on DELL, it looks like your computer has USB2.0).\n\nHere are some USB hard drives:\n\nhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=br_ss_hs/104-6257906-0810344?search-alias=aps&keywords=external%20USB%20hard%20drive\n\n2) Internal Harddrive\n-- Looks like you have a notebook.  This is rather more complex, you have to buy a HD with more capacity than your existing HD, transfer your contents over using another computer, then install the new HD.  I wouldn't go this route.\n\n3) Network Attached Storage (NAS)\n\nA little more complex and expensive than external USB.  The benefits is you can mount this to your home/work network, and any computer on the network can access it.  However, this means you have to have a network at home, typically with some sore of DHCP server (most home routers).  Networking setup takes more time than setting up the USB.  The cheaper NAS devices I have seen, from Netgear for instance, have poorer user reviews than the simpler USB drives.\n\nhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009RML8S/sr=8-1/qid=1142849285/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-6257906-0810344?%5Fencoding=UTF8\n\nHope that helps, I'm sure you'll get more options from other users.
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