I have purchased an external hard drive 180g to use for all of my
stored information, documents and financial, and want to use the lap
top for internet. What do I have to do to make this happen?

I assume the questions is "How do I use my laptop for internet access?"

Do you have an ISP?

If Yes, is it Dial-up or Broadband ?

Does your laptop have the proper hardware (i.e. modem, or NIC card)
for connecting to either of the above?

Depending on the hard drive model, there will be some sort of
connector that you will need to plug into the laptop to use the hard
drive with it. Once it is plugged in, it should just work. If the
drive hasn't ever been used before, the computer may ask you to format
it. This is OK. To use the drive, open 'My Computer', and look for a
drive other than C: or D: that has an icon that looks like a flat box
with a line on the front. That's the new drive.

It is an External Hard Drive, is it a USB HDD or something else.
Please clarify? If it is a USB then all you need to do is connect it
to your laptop and the laptop would automatically recognize the
external HDD as a removable drive. Hope this answers your question.

'and want to use the lap
top for internet'

What laptop?
and what does the hard drive have to do with the internet and a laptop?


I assume that you are using the hard drive to store information so
that you can access it on a normal pc and your laptop.(?)  This would
work fine.

To hook your laptop up with an internet connection you must have a modem and an isp.

it does not matter what you use your hard drive for. since you are
using a laptop, i assume that the hard drive is external, connected
through USB/Firewire port.

for internet connection, all you need is a phone line port for dial up
connection, or a LAN port (normally beside the phone line port,
slightly bigger). [ of which, u should have both ports on your
laptop.] if you do not have these, i would recommend getting a new
laptop, pcmcia is feasible, but not recommended, performance wise.

for broadband, you will need to sign up for the service, which the
Internet Service Provider will (or should) install the broadband modem
for you.no hassle.

if you would like to access data from the hard drive, just plug it
into your laptop. you can use your hard drive like how you would on a
personal computer, including data transfer (within drives, or online),
but may be speed restricted  depending on if you have a USB1.1 or
USB2.0 port. if you are using Windows XP, no driver is needed.
otherwise, a driver disc should be included with the case u bought for
the hard drive (external casing).

It sounds like you want to know, among other things, how to store your
"stored information, documents and financial," on the external drive.
When you hook it up your os (assuming xp or other mickysoft os?) will
assign it a drive letter. You then need to go into each program which
gives you the ability to assign a location for its datafiles and
specify the external drive letter and a subdirectory for the
information. You will need to create a subdirectory for each separate
storage area. For example, if your external drive (maybe usb?) is h:
then your financial stuff might be "h:\myfinancialstuff" or whatever
you wish to call it.