External Hard Drive
 

I`m thinking of getting an external HDD to act as a database for a music server. I don`t need anything massive as my present one has 210 albums on it and has only used up 19Gig of space, so a 60gig would be fine.

My question is, has anybody got one? and how reliable are they? It only needs to be usb, so i can take it with me when i go on hol`s etc.

Any thoughts......................

Re: External Hard Drive
 

Got a 120GB Western Digital one. Connected via USB2.

Absolutly perfect. Really fast and it stores my 56GB of albums fine :p

Re: External Hard Drive
 

following on from the above post , does your pc have either usb2 or firewire , you will need either to get sorted :)

Re: External Hard Drive
 

He could do it via USB1 except it will be slower :)

Re: External Hard Drive
 

I'd get a laptop hdd (about 40GB - 60GB) and use a USB caddy, these are excelent as they are 100% host powered so there is no hefty PSU to carry around with you so its extra portable.
I use 2 of these myself, 1x6GB USB1 & 1x40GB USB2. I also have a 120GB maxtor USB2 drive (full size drive) and thats fine too :)

Re: External Hard Drive
 

good point , albeit very much slower :erm:

Re: External Hard Drive
 

Still quite usable though. You'd get about a 1 meg/sec realistically sustained transfer rate, so 'streaming' music and video is fine.

I was gonna say though, I got a nice gizmo. It is a USB to IDE converter, so I can hotswap and use internal IDE hard drives with it.

Re: External Hard Drive
 

Hey guys
Thanks very much for the advice :D

Re: External Hard Drive
 

I saw a few of these on Ebay, are they any good?

Re: External Hard Drive
 

Sorry, I missed your post.

Mine behaves very well. Does exactly what it says on the tin. I can hotswap IDE drives and use them externally. Works on any computer, Win98 and up with a USB port. Supports USB 2.

Two things though: I don't think you can use it as a boot device and the disk isn't subject to power saving measures so I think the only way to stop the disk spinning is to disconnect it. Not the end of thew world, most people leave their computers on running something anyway.

Edit: I have never tried it with a CD drive, but I guess it will work.

Re: External Hard Drive
 

i got me a maxtor 120gb onetouch usb2 jobber. got about 30gb of music sitting its belly at the moment, along with other things :)

i also have a dvd writer linked up to an external case which just has a usb to ide thingy in it. this cost me about £20 from blankdiscshop i think, that can hold hard drives too.

go for it, makes life trÃÃâ€*’©s easy :)