External hard drives

[ryan]

Gonna get an external HD to use as a media drive. Not planning on doing backups with it, but i want to get all my music off the main drive to clear up some space.

Any brands to stay away from? Follow the same brand basics as the internal drives?

Was just thinking about getting THIS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148119) cheap seagate drive from newegg

[Jspafford]

I have this one... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822204022

I have around 9K songs and quite a few movies. It is relatively quiet. But you don't get the full 1TB, only 953gb.. lol

[ryan]

while very nice, that would be more expensive than the computer it's connected to :D

the computer is only a landing pad for movies/tv before they get burnt to dvd

[michowski]

I would just buy a sata drive solo and buy the case to make it external. You can get the case for about 25 bucks and a good drive for 150 and have like a 500gig drive

[michowski]

I have this one... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822204022

I have around 9K songs and quite a few movies. It is relatively quiet. But you don't get the full 1TB, only 953gb.. lol

Only 9k songs? I got a 200 gig and have 31,190 songs on it and there all at least 192kbps. No duplicates and i got the entire series of mash on here to dvd quality. And also a few movies. Still got 20 gig free

[metalmacguyver]

i just got a western digital 500GB internal from newegg to put in a case that i got for free. definately a good place to buy from. (all the geeks on my dorm floor recommended them) stay with a good brand like seagate or western digital and figure out how much you want to spend then find the best GB/Dollar value you can within your budget.

[ryan]

is there any advantage of going with an external case + hd?

[Jspafford]

is there any advantage of going with an external case + hd?

The drive is nothing anymore special than a one piece unit. I have 3 external cases with various sized drives in them. What I find them useful for is crash recovery. Say your computer takes a crap and you don't want to lose your data, you can pull the drive out, plop it into the external enclosure, flip it on, and you have access to all your stuff while you sort out the problem.

As for michowski,
Do you have a FTP so I can snag some of your music.. :icon_thumby:

[michowski]

no I dont but shoot me a pm with your email or if you got msn messenger and il be happy to send you whatever you want.

[michowski]

is there any advantage of going with an external case + hd?

Externals are mainly for a way of backing up your drives off the computer so if somethings goes wrong on your main computer your external drive still have all your data so it wont get lost. I myself am a completly hands on person. If I cant build it myself then chances are I will walk past it. I mentioned to you to build your own because this way you can customize it to what you want. If you have a lot of movies, music you can buy one that will hold what you got. Ya they come already made in sizes but meh. What I always wanted was cheaper to build it myself.

[metalmacguyver]

is there any advantage of going with an external case + hd?

im my situation, the case was free. the catch was that I had to get an IDE drive to match the case which was a little pricier than SATA drives.

[Jason]

Western Digital. Period. We used a massive amount of external drives at work. The conditions are far from ideal (dusty, cold, hot , who knows) and the WD hard drives are the only ones that haven't failed at least once.

[HareRazor]

I would consider going with a bus powered drive so you don't have to plug in the power everytime you go to a different computer. They are a lot smaller in size as they take a laptop hard drive. I am using a similiar case to this one
http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-2-5-Laptop-hard-drive-Enclosure-External-case_W0QQitemZ320200910628QQihZ011QQcategoryZ11170 QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Just make sure if you don't get one already assembled to get the case and drive interface to match.

[metalmacguyver]

Just make sure if you don't get one already assembled to get the case and drive interface to match.

the two common options being IDE and SATA. SATA is the more commone one because it is faster and cheaper.

[ryan]

The drive is nothing anymore special than a one piece unit.

ok - that's kinda what i assumed. it'd just come down to price then of one piece vs case + drive

[Jspafford]

Sometimes they have what they call network storage, which attaches VIA a Cat 5 cable to your router, but they are more expensive than what your looking at, that would be the only advantage a one piece unit may have.

[ryan]

ah yes that would be fun, but i dont like my roommate *that* much

[human5]

I have a 500gig WD mybook and love it. Right now i've got like 375 gig worth of music, tv and movies on it. I love these things and I'll proabably get a 1TB next.

My brother has a 100 gig protable external hard drive that he uses for his lap top. I had it first for my computer so I can take it places with me but I ran out of space quickly.

[CJREX]

If you are going to be transferring large amounts of data, look into a firewire drive.

I have several USB and firewire enclosures and the Firewire runs rings around the USB.

The firewire enclosures will usually do USB also. Costs more than a strictly USB but well worth it for big transfers.

[lbreevesii]

I will admit to having more failures from seagate drives. However, they do have the better warranty. FYI: Now that seagate has bought out maxtor the maxtor brand name now carries seagates 5 year warranty. I just don't know if they fixed the quality issues w/ maxtors or not.