Portable hard drives

[cannabis campbell]

Ok heres a question for the people who know their stuff on computers.. at the moment i just have a shitty laptop with only 30GB space on and i want to buy a portable hard drive for it does anyone know how they work? Is it just as simple as dragging the files onto it or is it much more complicated? How many wires does it come with is it just the USB?

Thanks :)

[Its a Plant]

I'm actually getting one of these here soon as well..

From what I've read it's just a USB connection...and you drag n drop onto that....nothing too hard at all.

I want to buy like a 300GB one so I can just have all my music on that and my computer still runs at top speed. ~

[cannabis campbell]

Yeah me too, I also want one because i want to use it with my ipod, since my main computer is broken and doesnt look like that will be getting fixed any time soon.

Do you think it would be possible to keep my music on a portable hard drive while using that with my iPod?

[Its a Plant]

Hmm what do you mean "using it with your iPod"?

I think if you keep the portable device plugged in, you should still be able to access it and add/remove songs, as well as add/remove them to your iPod...if that's what you mean...

[cannabis campbell]

Yeah well its itunes is kind of hard to understand unless you have an ipod yourself.

With the ipod its not like other mp3 players where you can drag the song onto it and then its all done even if you delete it from your computer. You have to keep it on your computer and you cant move the file or change the name because the ipod updates itself everytime you plug it in.

So what i mean is do you think it would be possible to have the music stored on a portable hard drive be put onto itunes and have that working fine without taking up any space on the actual pc?

[Its a Plant]

No yeah haha I get that part...I've got an iPod I just have a mac so things are all a little easier...

I don't see why you'd have a problem as long as you didn't unplug the portable drive when you went to update your iPod. ~

[cannabis campbell]

Yeah it should work... this is definately a good idea.

Thanks for the help Matthew. :)

Edit: That was a random guess at your name lol, I think i remember you saying it was that a while ago but im probably wrong?

[zonker28]

You will still need a mains supply for your external hard drive.
Plug into mains, attach your usb cable and run as a normal hard drive.
In most cases you must install your drivers BEFORE you connect your drive, but with windows "vista" you may not have to.


Hope this helps:thumbsup:

[Its a Plant]

Hahaha yeah cc, I was wondering what that was...

And NO, no Matthew here....you're cold as ice. :D

[FreeVenice]

I got an external hard drive for $80 that holds 120GB. All it is is plug and go, USB and you jet.

[cannabis campbell]

Sounds good and easy

thanks for the help people :D

[cannabis campbell]

Well i been looking around on the internet and i found a really good deal

500GB portable hard drive for £109. How good is that!! :eek:

[babystarbud]

that sounds pretty good,

another option would be to look at regular hard drives and buy a USB caddy to put it in, which is what most of them are anyway, might enable you to have a better (faster/reliable make) drive for the money, but a 500 gig for £100 sounds pretty damn good

[afghooey]

Well, since I barely ever take my laptop out of the house, I use a network hard drive that hooks up through my router.

Really nice, because I don't have to have a USB cord hanging off my computer all the time. The speed might not be quite as fast as USB though, it plays music off the drive just fine but video is a bit choppy so I have to copy to my laptop's hard drive (takes about 10 minutes to copy over a regular movie) then I just delete the copy off my laptop's hd when I'm done watching it.

This is what I got (250GB version):
Network Attached Storage - SimpleTech SimpleShare (http://www.simpletech.com/commercial/simpleshare/)

[Bogart]

I have been using a flash drive for a year now and love it. I have my firefox browser and all it's add-on loaded on it as well as anti virus for when OI use someone else's computer plus many other programs I use for day to day work. Best of all if I use it at my work computer the IT Dept can't see it and what I'm doing.

[Its a Plant]

So I'm probably going to start looking for a portable drive here next week as I FINALLY have some spare money coming my way....

That and my computer is really starting to lag and it bothers me to no end. ~

[cannabis campbell]

Tell me which one you get when you do man.

[babystarbud]

CC, if your up north, CCL computers in bradford have some Cooler Master HDD caddies on the shop floor for sale discounted...look nice, not available on thier website unfortunatley.

[cannabis campbell]

Yeah in liverpool

[LeetCraig]

I've got a 500GB one and it serves me fine. I do exactly what you are planning on, I store all my music on it.

[cannabis campbell]

cool thanks craig

how much did it cost you?

[Raelum]

hey there, i would suggest "building" your own external harddrive... it has a few advantages, for one if you ever get a desktop you can remove the harddrive from your external enclosure and put it inside your desktop, and if you ever have
more then one internal harddrive you can swap them out of your case (for example your desktop breaks and you left important documents on your harddrive, you can take the harddrive out and put it in your external case and access those files)....

i made a 300GB setup for like $120 about 2-3 years ago, and harddrives have dropped in price alot since then...

heres links to what i got for comparison.
Newegg.com - Open Box: Maxtor MaXLine III 7V320F0 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144091R)
i had a slightly older model with only 300 GB, and this has 320 for way cheaper then mine was! This is also SATA which is currently the cutting edge for harddrives. (WAY faster then IDE and ATA)

Here is a list of external enclosures... i would personally get a SATA harddrive with an external enclosure that supports both SATA and IDE (but you really only need SATA, but having both options is always nice)
Newegg.com - Buy Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more! (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000090092+1053807123+1054119835&name=SATA+%26+IDE)

as far as installing it, all you have to do it plug in the harddrive (easy as plugging in a power could) and plug the USB in the laptop, the laptop should detect it automatically...

as far as formatting your harddrive, i would suggest FAT32 for compatibility, This will allow you to use your harddrive on nearly every system, windows, mac, linux, your xbox (ask if you want to know :) )

hope this helps,
Raelum:smokin:

[Its a Plant]

Woohoooo...so my external drive FINALLY came in today..

I ended up going cheap lol, and since I don't know much about brands, I went with a Western Digital 500gig for a whopping $100. I couldn't pass that up.

Lol as of now all of my music is taking 4 hours to transfer over to it. Jesus. :jointsmile:

[cannabis campbell]

Good news plant!!, oh well at least after that 4 hours your computer will be a hell of a lot faster!!

Thats a bargin for $100, did you get it of the internet or a shop?

Tell me what its like when you finally sort it out, is it simple to just save music and movies and stuff directly to there and play it back just as fast?

[Its a Plant]

Okay so almost all of the stuff I want to store on there is on there....shit like music, movies, pictures, documents...

It's pretty easy to access, at least from mine. When it's plugged in, (I have an iMac btw), there's just an icon that says "My Book". I click it and anything that's on there is easy as hell to find. It's a little different getting used to, I will say that.

I've yet to notice a change in speed at all, but I dunno...In either case NOW I'll have room for a shit ton more music. :jointsmile:

[cannabis campbell]

Oh by the way i got that spiderman 3 for you man

[babystarbud]

im buying one for my dads laptop tomorrow, its a toss up between these three...

Buy 250GB Freecom USB2 3.5" Hard Drive 27035 from CCL - Online Retailer of the Year 2006 (http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=7186&category_id=367&manufacturer_id=0&tid=27035)


Buy 320GB LaCie Hard Drive 300968EK from CCL - Online Retailer of the Year 2006 (http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=9367&category_id=367&manufacturer_id=0&tid=300968ek)


Buy 320GB Western Digital My Book Essential WDG1U3200E from CCL - Online Retailer of the Year 2006 (http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=10305&category_id=367&manufacturer_id=0&tid=wdg1u3200e)

[babystarbud]

Ended up buying this drive in the end, turns out the old man is more of a spec junkie than me, lol

500GB freecom for £82

its a nice little unit and cheap for the money, very quiet in operation as it has no fan...apparently the Alu case act as the heat sink so it dosent need a fan.

very smart little unit and looks much better in the flesh

[Sensi Super Skunk]

Okay so almost all of the stuff I want to store on there is on there....shit like music, movies, pictures, documents...

It's pretty easy to access, at least from mine. When it's plugged in, (I have an iMac btw), there's just an icon that says "My Book". I click it and anything that's on there is easy as hell to find. It's a little different getting used to, I will say that.

I've yet to notice a change in speed at all, but I dunno...In either case NOW I'll have room for a shit ton more music. :jointsmile:

A desirable speed change will occur after defragmentation of the hard disk drive(s) takes place.

I have always assumed that the process of disk defragmentation took place in the background [automatically] of Mac OS X.

When you have provided your notebook with the appropiate space needed to defrag, it will commence assume.

[Sensi Super Skunk]

About disk optimization with Mac OS X (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668)

[Its a Plant]

Yeah I had to restart my computer for all the memory to return to my original HD....it worked though and things ARE moving a bit faster. :jointsmile: