I have an older Dell Dimension 8300 running XP/SP3 that I still use for general low-end computing, mostly Microsoft Office applications related to work. But I have a lot of home movies stored on several hard drives, and I would like to store all of my movie-related material on a single 1 – 2 TB external hard drive. As I shopped for such a drive, I found that almost all are USB 3.0 compatible, while my computer is USB 2.0. I looked online for a PCI card that would let me interface a USB 3.0 drive with my machine, and I found that such USB cards are compatible with PCI Express, while my computer is just compatible with PCI.
My question is whether it is possible to buy a USB 3.0 external drive and a PCI card of some type to allow me to interface with the USB 3.0 hard drive. More specifically, is it possible for a PCI Express card to interface with an ordinary PCI motherboard (I expect not, but I’m not sure)? According to the Owner’s Manual, my Dimension 8300 has an expansion bus compatible with PCI and AGP, at bus speeds of 33 MHz and 133 MHz, respectively. The computer has one AGP connector, with 172 pins and a data width of 32 bits, while I have four PCI connectors, each having 120 pins and a data width of 32 bits.
I appreciate any advice you can provide, other than to get rid of the computer – I really like this XP machine.
Thank you!
laserguy
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Dell Dimension 8300
Windows XP Home, SP3
Intel Pentium 4 CPU, 3.0 GHz with HT technology
3 GB SDRAM
500 GB primary internal hard drive, Seagate
250 GB internal hard drive, Seagate
500 GB external hard drive, Seagate, quantity = 2
Samsung optical drive
NVIDIA GeForce4 FX 5200 graphics card
SoundBlaster Live! sound card