No need to thank me.
Spending a little of my time trying to help someone is the least I can do.
Please remove everything from IObit, they can't be trusted.
https://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?/topic/29681-iobit-steals-malwarebytes-intellectual-property/Besides stealing property from others, their software often installs unwanted things without the user knowing it.
Don't worry too much about running XP SP3.
Many people (including me) still use it on old(er) systems.
Newer OS's are too slow or not even installing on those systems.
The developers forget that there many people in the world that can't afford a new(er) system.
"Our new OS now works a lot faster then any of our previous ones"
What they don't tell is that also are using new systems and not compared it on the old(er) systems.
If they had done so, it would be
"Our new OS uses more resources then any of our previous ones"
About using the drive as a external one...
Don't know what size it is, but it is often basically too small for nowadays storage needs.
I don't know what you normally do with the system, but perhaps a clean installation of XP and optimize it for
e.g.
- video editing
- storage of music
- storage of images
or use it to test and learn about other OS's like Free-BSD, Linux and such.