Old Compaq Presario 5711 C

I have an old Compaq Presario with a 466 Celeron Processor, 256 MB Ram,
12 GB Hard Drive. I have installed a USB 2 card. Would anyone know if I
can use an external USB Hard drive (say 40 GB)with this computer? I
understand there is a limitation on the size of an internal hard drive
with older Compaq computers. Could I expect a reasonable speed with an
external USB Drive?
Thanks in advance

It all depends.

The motherboard BIOS has some built-in limitation on its ability to recognize
the capacity of an IDE drive, but this limit does not apply to USB drives.

If the system is running an operating system which supports USB 2, complete with
USB 2 drivers, there is no problem. If the operating system only supports USB
1.1, then the drive will probably operate in a degraded USB 1.1 mode, but only
if the drive has its own external power source (transformer).

If the system is running an older version of Windows, there may be an operating
system limit on the maximum size of drive partition it supports... Ben Myers

On Wed, 08 Jun 2005 11:08:27 -0500, Barb Clarke wrote:

I have an old Compaq Presario with a 466 Celeron Processor, 256 MB Ram,
12 GB Hard Drive. I have installed a USB 2 card. Would anyone know if I
can use an external USB Hard drive (say 40 GB)with this computer? I
understand there is a limitation on the size of an internal hard drive
with older Compaq computers. Could I expect a reasonable speed with an
external USB Drive?
Thanks in advance

Thanks, Ben. I have Win Xp Home and have installed a USB 2 card so I
hope a 40 GB Hard drive will work
Barb