whats your opinion on external drives

[Crash n' Burn]

ok well just like the topic of thins thread im asking you all of ZP

whats your take on External drives and could you recremend me one

i have about 40gb's of music and i would like to have a dedicated music drives (not a partition like i do now but a seperate hard disk) and i thought external might be good as i could move it and bring it places like my friends house

so what do you people think

i saw a Maxtor 80GB external usb 2.0 for 60 bucks in the papaer at office max

is that one any good?

i thinking about spending no more than 160 US dollars

[mountain_rage]

Seagate from what I can tell make the best harddrives. I have a maxtor currently no problems with it yet but seagate seems to be the leaders. If you do wanna move your music around then a external would do just fine. Personally I burn my music to dvd's. This way I dont have to worry about my h/d crapping out and its very portable.

[silentscream]

u can get bigger for the price

have a look on amazon

and there are some that can actualy play music too so u can plug them into ure hifi

and have like 300 gigs

.

[Crash n' Burn]

u can get bigger for the price

have a look on amazon

and there are some that can actualy play music too so u can plug them into ure hifi

and have like 300 gigs

.

that sounds awsome

i need to get an external anyway because i need to transfer all my files from my 200 (using about 100) and 80gb(30gb of data) drives to an external and rearange it all

im thinking

take the 200 and spilt it into a small 10gb drive then have a 60gb Multimedia, 40gb Documents/Programs, 60gb Gaming, 30gb odds and ends

then have the 80gb as just music?

is that better than external?

[silentscream]

externals need certain things

like space, a seperate powersource,more cables

it would be neater to use an internal disk and a crapload cheaper

.

[Auggie2k]

True, I have an external 40GB with all my music on it but I would much prefer the speed of a properly connected internal hard drive. Even USB2 can't keep up. Plus, I keep thinking winamp is going crazy because I always forget to turn on my hard drive.

[Crash n' Burn]

Auggie2k
so are you saying for music wise it's better to have it all on one Internal not an external?

[silentscream]

even my 20 gig archos mp3 player needs 2 wires to play on my hifi (one for power one for aux)

and its tiny and it still gets in the way coz of the wires

.

[Auggie2k]

Not necessarily. It's more of my opinion because I'm stuck with a laptop at the moment and I miss the upgrading internally. All I could do with my laptop is change the RAM.

[silentscream]

Not necessarily. It's more of my opinion because I'm stuck with a laptop at the moment and I miss the upgrading internally. All I could do with my laptop is change the RAM.
man i know ure pain

however i have on order a monster

amd athlon 64 x2 4400
2gig of dual channel ram
geforce 7800gtx
19 inch 8 milisecond lcd

and the rest lol

cant wait

.

[Auggie2k]

Sounds sweet. I'm going to have to invest in a new one soon. Just a store bought one which I can upgrade, all I can afford to do right now.

[black_magiic]

Personally I love having an external drive. I bought a 3.5" drive enclosure and put a 200GB drive inside. I find it works quite well. I use it to store crap and back-up my music. I have all my music on my 250GB internal and my 200GB external, theory being if one dies the other will be fine and I can transfer it back.

[silentscream]

2 sites for u

http://www.vantagecomputers.co.uk/Outlet/
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/index.php?page=formamdindex

mine is coming from vantage

good value

they do finance too (but i just saved up lol)

.

[shawners]

I have a seagate 120gig.. The price is alot lower now and USB2. .. as well as if you want can opt to buy an external drive holder and buy an internal drive.. They have those usb bays you can stick an internal one in and power it on.

[Potato]

I had a Maxtor 120GB external and it took a shit on me ten days after I bought it.

But that's just one person's experience. Without a doubt, there are others who have had wonderful experiences with Maxtors.

[mountain_rage]

I hope they replaced that drive for you potato.

How about a external harddrive using firewire. Personally I have no experiances with external harddrives I just imagine firewire would be a faster method.

[Crash n' Burn]

I have a seagate 120gig.. The price is alot lower now and USB2. .. as well as if you want can opt to buy an external drive holder and buy an internal drive.. They have those usb bays you can stick an internal one in and power it on.


how can you link me to one of those "holders" your talking about

because then id just get a 500gb drive and a holder

[Potato]

External Enclosures (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=GO&Range=1&bop=and&description=hard+drive+enclosure&InnerCata=92)

[notbob]

external drives die a lot faster than the internal ones, and are very unsuitable for real "backups"

at least that's my opinion after losing a whole bunch of important shit, and seeing the same happen to several others

[silentscream]

can u raid mirror an external drive ??

so u can essentialy carry your comp and they will both update each other

(kinda like a briefcase)

.

[Crash n' Burn]

External Enclosures (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=GO&Range=1&bop=and&description=hard+drive+enclosure&InnerCata=92)

so basciacally i can get an internal drive and make it an external for 5 bucks AWSOME!

:icon_rr: :icon_thum :drunken_s :icon_sant :icon_prof

hey guys can i get some positive rep here im in the hole by -3500 looks ugly

[silentscream]

yeah it also means that if the caddy fails u can put the disk in a new one or just in ure comp

.

[WE_DELIVER]

I use external drives a lot and am happy with them. But their performance greatly depends on the type of enclosure you get. Some are so shitty that they won't mount, or might even damage your drive.

I have 3 of these now:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817146602
With a Western Digital and a Hitachi drives installed.

And I am really happy with them. Had the first one for probably a year now.
I use both Firewire and USB2.0, depending on which cable I have handy at the time. And there are no problems at all.

Interms of price, I usually wait untill you can get a drive for cheap via a rebate from Best Buy, or CompUSA and then grab one, buy the enclosure and put it together myself. Much better than overpaying for a prebuilt external.

Performance is great as well. I dont know why Auggie is having problems cause Firewire and USB 2.0 are both fast enought not only to stream music through, but even to capture video. Perhaps he can tell us more, cause im curious.....

[silentscream]

icybox are great enclosures too

.

[Jitway]

I have 12 drives and 8 of them are external. Got over 3tb of space. I really like the seagate and maxtor drives as far as external. Most cases are ok if you build your own external drive, but get a external case that has a on and off switch,,,very important so you can disconnect drives without lossing any data.

[shawners]

external drives die a lot faster than the internal ones, and are very unsuitable for real "backups"

at least that's my opinion after losing a whole bunch of important shit, and seeing the same happen to several others
that little tidbit could of been useful to me before i bought my seagate usb drive. =P~

[mountain_rage]

that little tidbit could of been useful to me before i bought my seagate usb drive. =P~

Well unless im mistaken all of seagates harddrives have a 5 year warrante. Just register it and hope it never burns out. They have a 5 year on internal at least I can only imagine they have the same for external.

[CRLocky]

I had an external hard drive, firewire, 80 gig of space apart from my shitty comcrap laptop... until one day I woke up to a 4 foot fire next to my bed.

A fire in which my external hard drive, with all my sensitive data and backups and quality videos and mp3s, perished, and has since been destroyed. It actually was a great thing to have, seeing as I only had 20 gig on my laptop. However, at the time, I spent about 100 bucks for that. While last week, I purchased a 160 gig INTERNAL hard drive, Seagate 7200 rpm barracuda on sale for 50 bucks. So where's the deal? Internals.

Further note, the comcrap laptop ended up going kaputs a little while later as the screen hinges proceeded to slowly provide less and less support. The fire was NOT caused by an external hard drive, but by some candles which a stupid ass put there the night before (me). And, I did not suffer any major injuries, only a minor burn on my fingers.

[Krell]

This is what I recomend:

http://www.amselectronics.com/Products/VenusSeries/Venus_ds/Venus_ds.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145657



.

[Mels_Smileys45]

There is nothing wrong with external drives, thats bogus bullshit, the only reason people have more problems with them is because of the way they handle them. Like IDIOTS! You must not kick, drop, bump, play hot potato with or fart near external drives. Other wise they are jim dandy and are no less realiable than an internal drive, hell they are the same dman drives for gawds sake! . I have had one fail about 6 months after I dropped it. Other wise no problems.

[WE_DELIVER]

This is what I recomend:

http://www.amselectronics.com/Products/VenusSeries/Venus_ds/Venus_ds.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145657
.

Those look awesome, and the fan is a cool addition.

[notbob]

Well unless im mistaken all of seagates harddrives have a 5 year warrante. Just register it and hope it never burns out. They have a 5 year on internal at least I can only imagine they have the same for external.

i got a free drive, but that doesn't replace the data

i made cd backups for everything after that, and now i'm cool after 3 more huge
crashes

[silentscream]

for back ups

hard disks are just not good enough

they are vulnrable to too many ways of losing data (or corrupting it)

if u want back ups get a cheap dvd burner and a hundred cheap dvds (or good quality stuff if u can afford)

.

[Krell]

Those look awesome, and the fan is a cool addition.

Theyre silent, they stay cool to the touch, and no mechanical vibration etc, just do their job they way I want. You can stack them like I do, or put them on their sides.

If you have 4 stacked up, then you can always see the activity light on D:, E:, F:, etc, and know your readng and writing from the correct drive.




.

[silentscream]

Theyre silent, they stay cool to the touch, and no mechanical vibration etc, just do their job they way I want. You can stack them like I do, or put them on their sides.

If you have 4 stacked up, then you can always see the activity light on D:, E:, F:, etc, and know your readng and writing from the correct drive.




.
storage whore lol

.

[notbob]

for back ups

hard disks are just not good enough

they are vulnrable to too many ways of losing data (or corrupting it)

if u want back ups get a cheap dvd burner and a hundred cheap dvds (or good quality stuff if u can afford)

.


dvds are shitty for back ups

a couple scratches and they're toast

cheap cdrs are relatively tough, and cheaper than dirt

[silentscream]

dvds are shitty for back ups

a couple scratches and they're toast

cheap cdrs are relatively tough, and cheaper than dirt
use t cut or brasso and u can repair a cd or dvd about 5 times

works like a charm

or u could just use cases lol (jk)

but yeah i agree about the fragility

but i make baackups often and have many duplicates in racks (paranoyed)

im pretty sure there is a new type of dvd out now that is much harder to damage.

.

[mountain_rage]

Tdk just invented a new kind of material thats next to impossible to scratch but I dont think they released any disc using the technology yet.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6583

I guess the technology is older then I thought now im curious where this technology is at.

[silentscream]

would be nice to see

.

[.:sp00ky:.]

I know this is abit of topic but I bought a pack of 20 dvd re-writables thinking it would be good to be able to re use them as I swap alot of stuff with friends.

anywho they suck I made 3 copys of xp...umm I mean linux and eachtime I tryed to install it one random file would be missing.

anyways I used a cd and it was fine Iv tryed many other files on these dvds and their shit they work once and then by the time Iv got them to a friends house the data has fucked up on them 0_o

anyways Iv got 20 shiny tea costers now

I think dvds suck and I agree that cd's seem alot less fragile

/end of rant.

[Krell]

Buy RiData \ Ritek from newegg.com

end of story





.

[.:sp00ky:.]

The make is memorex I buy their cd's in bulk and have never had a problem,maybe I just got a dodgy box :(

[Excrement_Cranium]

I have a seagate 120gig.. The price is alot lower now and USB2. .. as well as if you want can opt to buy an external drive holder and buy an internal drive.. They have those usb bays you can stick an internal one in and power it on.


That is what I am thinking about.

Though, I'd like to swap drives. Don't know what happens to harddrives that just sit there....

[mountain_rage]

The make is memorex I buy their cd's in bulk and have never had a problem,maybe I just got a dodgy box :(

Could be your burner. Some burners are more prone to errors then others.

[silentscream]

burn at the lowest speed and see if anything changes

.

[catch22713]

and there are some that can actualy play music too so u can plug them into ure hifi
.

I think I know what you're talking about. I've seen enclosures with rca audio jacks on them. Has anyone tried this? I'm just thinking about the interface for chosing mp3's (i.e., being able to pick out one song from a few thousand).

[silentscream]

i think they can plug into a video out and u get a remote

so its kinda like a hdd recorder but just for audio and loads smaller

.

[notbob]

i had a pentium 1 with a video card with a tv out that was the mp3 interface

crank up the font size, use the really big winamp (Click the"d" on a 2.x version)

keep a file of playlists, or make a big random one, or by genres, sure beats the radio

[truelyme]

sure beats the radio

I agree with that notbob. Decades of payolla have put FM radio in the place AM was when everyone left it. Hearing the same songs over and over every hour just doesn't cut it. Nor are you going to find new music exposure there.

I have stuck with internals for hds. The speed of transfer and the consistancy of C: drive made that decision for me. I have maybe 2 internal bays left and it will be time for either external bays or for external drives and enclosures.

With that in mind I have been paying close attention to this thread.

[WE_DELIVER]

This is what I recomend:

http://www.amselectronics.com/Products/VenusSeries/Venus_ds/Venus_ds.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145656

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145657

.

I took your advice and hope these are really good. Cause I just ordered 6 of these and 6 320Gig WDs for work. Hope they work out...

[Krell]

:icon_thum :icon_thum

Mine are going non stop since Spring, I am ordering more myself



.

[Mels_Smileys45]

I agree with that notbob. Decades of payolla have put FM radio in the place AM was when everyone left it.
.


I thought everyone left AM because it sounds like shit. I remember when FM was a fancy deal to have on your radio. Thats when we all had those amazing 8 track players.

[WE_DELIVER]

I just hope those WDs hold up, with all their recent failures at work, im a bit nervous.... But the fans will keep them cool, and theyre only for backup anywayz.

[Krell]

I bought two drive coolers from CompUSA, for my 10,000rpm SCSI drives as C:

They are: http://mdmm.com/products/techietoyz/images/MD-HDDF-CF602-pkg.jpg

The fans slowed, and one locked up, would not even turn and was tight by finger

So . . . I removed the sticker on the fan, and added a drop of Tri-Flow Teflon Lubricant to the bearing part, then reapplied the stickers.

Works like a charm, fans spin like new.

So, I saved myself $20 by not replacing them yet. Drives are 82 degrees.



.

[sorros]

I like external drives although expensive!

[Mels_Smileys45]

My assessment is that people should stop being lazy with not further backing up their files to another media, IE DVDs or CDs. Buying another hard drive everytime you get one full is absurd. Nothing will save your files forever but hard drives are so gargantuan these days it really adds new meaning to the old adage "putting all your eggs in one basket". At least if one DVD goes bad youve only lost a few gigs, not a few hundred gigs. I sometimes get just as lazy as the next guy and its all to easy to do, with drives being so cheap these day, but I took time out tonight and burned off over 80gigs and still have more to go. I should never have let myself get that far behind but like I said, Im lazy too. Just a admonition to all the lackadaisical file sharers out there. Dont lose your booty.

[Mels_Smileys45]

I like external drives although expensive!




They are getting cheap as dirt these days! http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7366691&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat33200050002&id=1122653260185

Maxtor Personal Storage 3100 100GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive

$100 bucks

A recomend seagate but for the price its a deal! You can catch them on sale sometimes for the lo lo. Even Wal Mart has them cheap as a tank full of gas!:icon_thum

[WE_DELIVER]

They can get pretty expensive, thats why you wait for an internal drive to go on sale for cheap(best buy and comp usa have crazy rebates sometimes). Then you buy the drive, and get an external enclosure. And you can get yourself a 200gig external if not more for less than a 100 bucks.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Theyre cheap where I am, maybe I live in some magical part of the country. I went to best buy a week ago looking for an enclosure and they dont carry them anymore for some reason. But the last one I bought it seems like it was around 30 or 40 dollars, thats a tad high to me. It ends up being about the same price.


http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7441832&productCategoryId=pcmcat33200050002&type=product&cmp=++&id=1124432398244

Seagate 160GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive
130 bucks

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=5566988&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat33200050001&id=1055388011277


Seagate 120GB Internal Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive
100 bucks + 30 for enclosure = 130 bucks


The external is gonna be the better buy with more space to boot. Not much price difference these days. As I said, cheap as dirt

[sorros]

although $100 is cheap i prefer to hold onto the money! I still have a used 40gig and if i need another one i'll go down to the dump and forage in the computer storage bin, yank a few HDrives out of old machines and one of them is bound to work! Hell im still driving a 1986 car and just now bought new shoes. 2 years went by I bought a pair of keds for 6.25 the old hightop basketball sneakers. I can wash these so they dont smell which is nice. Fuck even my dog is cheap. Believe it or not I reuse garbage bags as well TRUE. I hate buying anything. It's a good thing the economy doesnt rely on me:icon_rr:

[Globalist]

Although 'expensive' (depends on what you class as expensive) I use an Archos AV 700 as a portable Hardrive (100G), above all, it's a digital video recorder.

[jacem913]

Id stick with an internal, as they are just as easy to put in, as you dont have to mess with the usb drivers and everything!