The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm getting ready to purchase an external USB drive for my laptop so I can carry more tunes with me, as my friends and i like to sing karaoke and play downloads. External HD's are expensive compared to internal HD's. Can i use an internal HD, as an external drive? Wouldn't a usb case all that is needed? I ran across one from Ultra that has a fan and its USB and Firewire capable. It even comes with the cables for less than 30 bucks. Should i go with a 72,000 or 10k rpm with a good sized power source? I know Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital make these. I am just trying to save a few bucks is all. Some of these External HD's are very expensive. I hope i made it clear what i think might work. Any suggestions or concerns. LMP

Some of the combos (external case and drive) are cheaper than buying separate components. Just look for items on sale.

Check places such as CompUSA (I think they have a 500GB unit on sale this week), Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.

The cheaper external drive bays (cases) are not always the best buy. Some have fans and are loud, some cases are crap, some have poor power supplies, etc. If you want to go with buying separate, check sites such as www.newegg.com as they have ratings on devices.

I just purchased a 160G Maxtor USB drive for $58.


IF you can spend a $100 you can probably find a 250 to 320 drive somewhere..

My son's looking for one of these too and wondering whether it's really worth the extra $100 to get one that connects with Firewire, rather than USB?

If he has USB2.0 there isn't any reason to go with firewire other than to save the USB port for something else. He would also have to have firewire port.

Another consideration is where the drive gets its power - from the USB/Firewire connection or from a power cord that you have to plug into your surge protector.

Jack, are you saying that Firewire is no faster than USB2.0?

Firewire seems to provide much better performance than USB 2.0

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

7200 RPM will be more than adequate for most users. It is doubtful you would need the extra boost provided by Firewire. If, however, you think you may move to video editing apps in the future, Firewire 800 provides a great performance boost. There are quite a few external drives that have all 3 interfaces built in. By the way, Seagate owns Maxtor.

Looking at the link John provided, if you have a MAC, firewire is faster. But if you have a Windows PC, USB2.0 is as fast as Firewire 400.

All the USB connected external drive enclosures that I've seen have their own power supply, they do not get their power from the USB port (and a USB port could not support the power needed for a hard drive or CD/DVD drive).

USB 2.0 still slightly lags FW 400 even on the PC platform. However, the difference is fairly negligible.

I just bought another Western Digital EXHD on sale at Circuit City on Friday. I think the sale is still on.

WD "My Book" 320GB for $99.00; complete with AC power adapter and USB cord. Just plug it in and your PC picks it up and assigns a drive letter right away.
I also have another WD My Book (160GB) EXHD.

I've decided to save all my CD and LP files in .wav
format, and that format eats up lottsa BYTES.

Hence, more space needed.

Chip

Hey Chip, we just got back from Best Buy and that's exactly what we bought too!

Hey Jimbeaux - WAY COOL!

I think WD makes fine products. My 1st ever EXHD was a Maxtor, and it failed about 2 months after the 1 year warrantee was up. I tried to get them to give me a new one, but they wouldn't budge.
I told them, "Well, that sucks!"

I basically now use the WD160 to immediately move all the .wav files off my PC HD to it; so it's usually running all the time that PC is running.
If this unit keeps running as much as the PC, then it's life will definnitely start to get shortened, and could fail just like the PC's HD will. So I keep the WD320 OFF, until I'm ready to put something on it, then turn it right off. It would be really revolting to have spent all the time and effort it takes to back things up, just to lose it with an EXHD meltdown.

It's like, what's the point to save anything only to lose it all with a burned-out EXHD. Just trying to back-up the back-up .

FWIW

Chipper

I don't know if this will fit your need, but I just bought a 2 GB flash drive for $25. It's USB and can be used with my computer and my lap top. I'm sticking a bunch of songs, pics and some other stuff to take with me on our back East trip. After all the things I put on it I still have 1.3 GB open. I can reach in and play a song from the flash drive, on my computer and it works just fine. Seems to me to like an easy, cheap way to go if you don't have massive files.

I recently, bought the Western Digital - "My Book" External Hard Drive (320 GB) @ Circuit City. $99.00. Using it, on my notebook. So far...it's been great.

Knock on wood...