TSGL: Teenagers

[Russell W. Coover]

Denise, 

I just saw Chuck's answer and he is absolutely correct.  While a larger hard
drive would improve everything tremendously, you really need to get that
music off the hard drive. 

Your choices are ... 

1. Buy a CD burner and put the music on several CDs. 
	You will need a minimum of 11 CDs (at 700 MB per disk) to contain
all his  	music. While external CD writers are good, they must be
connected to the 	computer someway, probably through a USB cable. That
is a disadvantage 	because the machine will not write to the disk very
quickly. In addition, 	external CD writes are more expensive than internal
CD writers. Installation of 	the internal variety is easy.

2. Buy a DVD burner. It probably should be able to burn both DVD + and DVD -
disks. 	It works the same as the CD writer, but the disks will hold a lot
more data, 	approximately 4.7 GB. You'll need only 2 of these disks to
hold all of his music. 	Again, the external drive is OK but the internal
drive is better. It is installed in 	exactly the same way a CD burner is
installed. 

3. Buy a larger hard drive and place it within the computer as a "slave" to
the first 	drive. At least you can get all that music off your primary
hard drive, freeing up   	much needed space. But be aware that the
wonderful Windows ME might not  	be able to recognize all of the
space you have on the new hard drive. I'm not  	sure just how much space it
will recognize, but you may not be able to use 	anything beyond 32 GB,
unless you partition the new drive. And if you don't 	know what I mean by
partition and don't have a friend who can help, don't do  	this. Of
course, if you find a 30 GB drive to slave, you shouldn't have any
problem.

4. Buy an external drive to be attached to the computer through a USB cable.
The 	warning above about USB drives being slow remains, as does the
warning 	about drives larger than 32 GB on an ME machine. 

5. Buy a larger hard drive and use software such as Acronis True Image or
Norton 	Ghost to clone the old hard drive. Remove the old hard drive and
replace it with 	the new. Of course, you may still have problems with
the 32 GB maximum hard 	drive size without partitioning the new hard drive.
By the way, if you do go this 	route, you may want to slave the old hard
drive to the new one. 

6. Buy a new computer with a decent Operating System and a decently sized
hard 	drive. One requirement before purchase is for the new system to have
a DVD 	burner. Right now, XP computers can be purchased cheaply as a new
OS, 	Vista will be coming out at the end of January. I saw an ad today
for a desktop 	for $149. I don't think it had the DVD burner, but I saw
several ads for around 	$400. The E-Machine is usually an exceptional value
for inexpensive 	computers.
 
You really should replace that ME computer.  It's going to cause you
problems in the future, and it is not very secure. I suspect it is already
full of viruses and other bad things. Microsoft is no longer supporting it,
so you won't get any help from them.

And find out from your son where he is getting that music. Is it free? If it
is, then he is probably getting it through Peer to Peer software, where
software can be illegally downloaded. And the guys offering the "free"
software are probably sending other things, too, like little programs where
they can control your machine remotely ... without your knowledge ... or
with a virus or three. And guess what ... the actual owners of the music are
watching these websites, and they tracking down the folks who are
downloading and uploading their music. AND THEY ARE SUEING THEM FOR LARGE
AMOUNTS OF MONEY. They probably will not sue your son, THEY'LL SUE YOU. So
stop him before he ruins you financially.

I wish you and your son well. But please, protect yourself and your son.

Russ Coover  

I am trying to find myself. If you see me before I do, please ask me to wait
until I return.

-----Original Message-----
From: list-bounces at tsgserver.com [mailto:list-bounces at tsgserver.com] On
Behalf Of denise_fournier
Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2006 10:46 AM
To: Tech Support Guy Mailing List
Subject: TSGL: Teenagers

Hi everyone kind enough to read this

My teenage son likes to download and burn music.  The folder he has his
music in is 7.37GB in size.  The capacity of my
C drive is 15.8GB with 13.4GB used and 2.4GB free.  Is there anything I can
do to improve these numbers? I don't know too much about computers.  Can I
buy something like an external hard drive that he can but his music on?

I have a compaq presario 5wv270 running windows ME

Thank you for any advice
Denise Fournier


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