External hard drives?

SpookyPistolero

SpookyPistolero

Joined
Dec 13, 2005
Messages
6,105
Howdy folks-

I just recently discovered torrent downloading, and have already accumulated too many movies and such. So I'd rather get an external chunk of memory to use on multiple computers, and to not bog down my system.

Can someone give me the basics? Are the just giant flash drives?

What's the minimum I can pay for a decent one?

Thanks guys!
 
There are all different kinds. You can get USB Flash drives that have a lot of storage but I've found them quite slow when moving large files on or off them. They are however very handy for smaller files.

For the big files I use external hard drives. They come in two sizes 3.5 inch (laptop hard drives) or 5.25 inch (desktop hard drives). The prices on these just keep dropping like crazy. I saw a 500 Gb (5.25) Western Digital at Target for $78 this weekend. :eek: Watch the sales or check on some websites like techbargains.com for some sweet deals.

Circuit City.....Best Buy type stores always have some good deals running as do stores like Costco or Sam's Club.
 
External hard drives are just what they say, a normal hard drive in some kind of external enclosure. You can buy them prebuilt or buy the enclosure seperately and stick in whatever hard drive you want.

They connect either through USB or eSata. eSata is much faster if your computer supports it.
 
I'm currently in the process of mounting a external hard drive into a small Pelican case, i'll post pics when i'm finished.

LG , Seagate, Western Digital are all good. If you can, find a SSD (solid State Drive). no moving parts to break.
 
Bushman5 said:
I'm currently in the process of mounting a external hard drive into a small Pelican case, i'll post pics when i'm finished.

LG , Seagate, Western Digital are all good. If you can, find a SSD (solid State Drive). no moving parts to break.
Click to expand...

The SSD's are neat, but the price per GB is still huge compared to the dirt-cheap SATA drives. The local online/retail giant here, NCIX, has had 500GB HDs for less than $70 a couple of times. I use an old 120GB HDD I have in a seperately-bought enclosure just for dragging movies and other downloads to my buddy's house to share. It's a heck of a lot easier than burning a bunch of DVD-Rs. Mine (old IDE unit) was pretty much plug and play once I installed the included drivers. My PC saw it as a USB mass storage device, emphasis on the mass:)
 
all my drives are Western Digital. i had a problem with my first one, the casing hardware stopped working, but i was able to use the drive still. right now, i have 2 internal, 4 external, and a few that i swap casings, almost all WD.

Torrents are great! mininova, isohunt, piratebay, btmon, epornium. go crazy!
 
I have three external hard drives attached to my computer via USB cables; two of them are 360G and one is one Terabyte. The T-drive cost less than $150 US dollars. All are are mounted in fan-cooled enclosures. Extra memory is cheap these days. I remember when a 40M drive cost over $200! I too had to get the extra drives because of torrents! Mostly old TV shows in full seasons, but plenty of movies and programs too! Because of it, I'm getting ready to go down to the shop and pick up one more 1-T drive, but I'll start using SATA drives from now on because of the speed of transfer.

Stitchawl
 
Be careful with the Torrent downloading. Make sure that you have malware protection-both anti-virus and spyware/adware, and keep them updated. Scan daily.
 
When/if it comes time to purchase, take a look at LaCie's line of Rugged external hard drives.. I have had one for about a year now, it's been to Africa and back with me, to work and back countless times, dropped on the floor, thrown in my bag, tossed across the room, etc. and it still keeps ticking. They're made for tough applications and so far, it's lived up to its name. :thumbup:
 
Most computers can have multiple hard drives installed internally - my newest computer holds SIX! Those are usually cheaper than external drives. May not be the best solution for you, but perhaps something to consider.

Also, a quick question: Once you download a movie and watch it, why not delete it and get your hard drive space back? How many times you gonna watch the same movie over and over again? Just wondering...

Also, instead of buying a hard drive to support your downloading, why not just rent the darn movies? At $1-$2 each, I can rent a LOT of movies for the price of a large hard drive. Again, just wondering...

And I'm sure you don't need me to point out that sharing files with strangers over the internet is the easiest way to get a virus.
 
What is network attached storage?

I have been downloading for years now since near the end of napster ,through limewire and now utorrents with isohunt and piratebay. I have a slut computer that does all my downloading but does not have any valuable data on it and another different one for online purchases etc. At first I burned all my mvies to disk but recently it has to be a very good show to bother burning. Even Gran Torino which was pretty good and was an excellent copy did not get burned.

I have a new badassed PC on the way ,an HP pavilion elite with a Q6700 ,2.66 GHZ quad core and a 750 gig HD. However I have the old computer in the living room being used as a media box for my 40 inch LCD and I would like to be able to have an external HD that could be accessed or added to from both PC's? Is that possible? Maybe it is just a matter of having a HD with 2 inputs?

I am not a expert on computers but one thing I do know is quality. It seems that Apple used to have really first rate cases ,wires ,screens etc but not so much anymore probably because people were not so willing to pay a premium for them. That is why I went with the Pavilion Elite. I had to buy the matching monitor separately and it is already here and is truly a work of art compared to my old Samsung syncmaster.
It weighs so much more because of the all metal construction ,has all sorts of inputs including real HDMI (the PC has a blueray/HD player) some USB outlets and speakers.
Hopefully the PC will be here tomorrow because I can't wait to play with it!
 
Networked storage is good and all, but for hush hush or possible virus data you want a detachable storage device, especially if you have "clean" computers on a network you don't want the virus to spread across the network. Anyways.

Network storage means that any computer with access to the network and privileges to use the storage can use it.
 
Thanks 65535 ,I appreciate the quick response. I will stick with the external for now.
I don't really need one that big with a 750 internal so a 350 gig that I can access from 2 PC's is ideal.
 
Clead said:
The SSD's are neat, but the price per GB is still huge compared to the dirt-cheap SATA drives. The local online/retail giant here, NCIX, has had 500GB HDs for less than $70 a couple of times. I use an old 120GB HDD I have in a seperately-bought enclosure just for dragging movies and other downloads to my buddy's house to share. It's a heck of a lot easier than burning a bunch of DVD-Rs. Mine (old IDE unit) was pretty much plug and play once I installed the included drivers. My PC saw it as a USB mass storage device, emphasis on the mass:)
Click to expand...

Aren't the SSDs still slower than the best SATA drives? :confused:
 
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