My friend's laptop is with pentium 3 processor. The brand is "Hp" one. Since his notebook is very very slow with unnecessary softwares and files, he prefer to "FORMAT" his hard disk. So, I want to know some information.

(1) Is it compatible, window XP and Pentium 3 processor?
(2) Is is possible to use external hard disk for Pentium 3 processor?
(3) Plz advice me if there is any information that is useful for formatting!

Thank you!

1) Possible. Not advisable. Simply by it's size it would be slow in general. Plus you would need at least 256MB RAM/ preferably 512MB.

2) External drive for storage? Yes. Assuming USB ports. Note that the laptop will have USB 1 and any new external drive will be USB 2. It will be "backwards compatible" but again slow.

External drive for XP (or any Operating System)? No.

3) When you install XP it gives you format options.


You would be much better getting a new laptop. There is not much sense in spending money on obsolete hardware.