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I need a new Portable HD!


ultras67

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Just now I have a laptop with 40Gb hd. But with going to broadband i am very quickly filling it up. Add to that, many torrent / share sites want a minimum share and I am not sure what to do.

 

Stuff the torrents and burn to a cd/dvd

 

mix and match. download the extra to a vcd/dvd and keep a minimum of the share value?

 

buy a new external hd and use that as the overflow - linked to my pc through a usb port

 

 

so, what to do and where to get, pantip, fortune?

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Your using torrents? If you have the money, I'd really suggest buying a desktop.

 

Leave the desktop on all the time downloading. Setup a small home network and use your laptop to surf and use it as a DVD player to view your torrents on the TV.

 

Failing that, I'd say a DVD burner by far. They are cheap! I don't know about external, but an internal dual layer DVD burner is just 2,200 baht!!!

 

<<burp>>

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My older IBM laptop has a mere 11MB HD, so went out and bought a 80-Gig external HD to use for storage and backups. The 7200RPM PATA IDE drive cost only 2300-Bt...and another 500 BT for the external case and USB connectors. It was a cheaper alternative to buying a new and faster computer. The only (minor) downside is that my older laptop can't use the new and faster SATA HD's.

 

Using CDR's and DVD's for storage is fine....but pretty soon you'll have a large collection of disks, whereas all files can be contained on one easily searchable place on a HD. Further,as CD and DVD technology continually advances, what happens to all those disks that you filled with older technology...do you have to consolidate them on the newer double-layer DVD's or just continue to accumulate more storage disks? Such can be a nusance..IMHO

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I went to Panthip at the weekend and everyoen who sold the extrenal drives said to go for them rather than the internal drives + cases. So was that because of increased margins or reliability / colling problems?

 

Seagate

120Gb 8390B

160Gb 8900B

200Gb 10500b

300Gb 12590B

400Gb 18900B ( uk online price 14000B!)

 

I did a comparison on the internal drives and they were about half or less including the box.

 

If the reliability problems they were talking about is just sales talk, how easy is it to plug in the drive to the case to the pc. Is it idiot proof?

 

And er what is sata and pata? Does it matter as I assume it would be picked up just as another device on the usb port, yes?

 

 

G - as much as I might like to, buying another pc is not going to happen for a variety of reasons. I am just leaving my laptop connected all the time anyway.

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SATA and PATA information:

************

Normal hard drives like we are all used to using are Parallel ATA (PATA). There is a new standard called Serial ATA which boosts transfer speeds up to 150MBs (as opposed to a max of 133MBs). The standard also improves airflow and has some other benefits. However - using SATA means you will need an SATA controller, an SATA drive, and an SATA power cable/adapter (often not included on power supplies yet). The actual speed improvement of SATA vs PATA is hardly noticible with current drives unless you are talking about the high end SATA drives using RPMs higher than 7200. If you are building an average/upper end system there is currently no pressing reason to go SATA.

************

 

Haven't hooked up an external drive, so I don't know what's involved per se. But if the external box includes the requisite controller and interface to USB, I don't see why there is such a big difference in price except for margin.

 

Maybe someone whose done this before will give us some better information.

 

<<burp>>

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I think the issue is power supply. The external box-type drive will want more power than the USB can give it, so there will be a need for a 5VDC input to the box it lives in. If you can live with that, then the external drive made from the components discussed for 1/2 the $$ is the way to go. Otherwise, the specialised USB external drive is needed.

 

Cheersm,

SD

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ultras67 said:....If the reliability problems they were talking about is just sales talk, how easy is it to plug in the drive to the case to the pc. Is it idiot proof?

 

Maybe I need to clarify my earlier post. The 'external' HD I purchased is the _same_ type of HD that you would normally use for an 'internal' HD. There is NO difference from a standard internal HD, hence the reliability is the same as an internal HD...unless you drop the HD and the case it's in :(

 

The CASE which allows the drive to be used as an 'external' drive included the following components:

1-a power supply adapter which you plug into any 110-220v wall socket

2-a hard aluminum case which encloses and protects the HD; there is circuit board connecter inside which mates the case to the HD

3- a USB connector cord which goes from the case to my laptop.

 

Upon plugging in the power supply and connect the USB cord to you laptop, your computer will recognize the new drive. You can then transfer files to it...or just create files in it just as you can with any other internal HD. It's really easy and a simple less costly method to add storage space

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If you don't plan to move your storage around you can use an internal HD without any problems. It's probably much more save against dumping inside the computer and you don't need an additional power supply.

 

I just installed an internal 300GB Samsung HD and it's doing fine. IMHO most important is reliability of a HD and Samsung seems to receive good rates. I only would buy high quality HD's therefore I would recommend read some reviews in PC magazines.

 

If your computer doesn't support USB 2.0 reading and writing an external HD will be very slow. The lastest external HD's need USB 2.0. This would be another argument against an external HD. But of course you can buy and install an USB 2.0 card...

 

Anyway, I use an external HD for backups and switch it off when not needed. This gives additional security against data loss. For our office I bought an external 240 GB Maxtror HD. The price was almost double of my internal 300 GB Samsung HD.

 

 

Edit:

I forgot, there is a third option: If you set up a small network with a router you can buy an external HD with WAN/LAN. With this you can use the external HD with both computers at the same time and don't have problems not having USB 2.0. But this is the most expensive solution.

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I have a Seagate 300GB (287GB effective storage) external drive, which is fairly idiot-proof; at least I haven't managed to mess it up yet.

 

One advantage of the external drive is that it's portable--don't drop it a lot, though!--so you can just toss it in a bag if, umm, you need to go somewhere in a hurry. Also, if you're sharing a massive amount of stuff with friends you can just take it along and suck their computer dry. It'll also be somewhat easier to just plug in to a new machine rather than disemboweling your old computer to transfer an internal drive.

 

If you can get it from the States do so; the prices are dirt cheap. Check newegg.com for price comparisons.

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