So I've run into the problem that I'm sure many of us have had before. Space.

For starters, my desktop hard drive is small. I think it's a mere 40 gigs, and I remember the day when a 1 gig HD was a huge deal. But now we know it's not.

My laptop has 80 gigs, and that was fine for a while. But I love music, and I enjoy downloading the newest, latest anime that hasn't even been liscensed here yet. I can only burn so fast, because I use DVDs, which means I have to wait until I have at least 20 of something before committing it to disk. And that can be an issue when downloading 3 or 4 series gradually, and box torrenting a few others!

I thought about putting another drive in my desktop, but I also have spotted a really cool 120 gig external hard drive, for pretty cheap, in several places. I know they have it a walmart nearby, and it's the same as something I found on Newegg.

My question is:
How many of you use external hard drives, and simply network them in to be used by everyone? Do you like it? Has it made things more convenient for you?

Thanks for your help and input.

I use an external hard drive simply because I don't have enough mounting spots inside my computer to put in another internal hard drive. My case is weird like that, and breaking one of the cheaply made mounting brackets doesn't help my situation much more.

However, having an external hard drive is nice. I was hospitalized a few weeks ago, and during my stay my friend let me borrow his laptop. I asked him to bring my external hard drive, and I was able to access all my data and movies and music from there, which I wouldn't have been able to do if I had bought another internal hard drive for space.

Ultimately, I think choosing between an internal or external hard drive is up to what you're going to use it for. If it's for storage of data that won't be accessed extremely often, go for an external. Being able to move it around is a definite plus, especially if you have a laptop, or if you ever (and I hope it never happens) get hospitalized and want access to your data. Get an internal hard drive if performance is a must, or you plan to put several hard drives in your computer in a RAID for performance. Typically, the fastest hard drives in terms of access speed and physical RPM speed come in only the internal variety.

I have an external and the convenience and portability factor are big for me. The ability to switch the hard drive between a desktop and a laptop is nice and speeds transfers up for me, instead of having a desktop with an internal hard drive and transfer over a network.

As a side note, on price alone, it would probably be better to get the internal HD as it's much larger in capacity and can be placed into a external enclosure in the future.

Go buy a dedicated harddrive machine server type thing


slap like 4 800 Gb harddrives in there


map that computer up to a drive on all your comptuers on the network and never worry about space again.

Although I have plenty of room on my internal HDD(s), I use an external 320Gb HDD to store all my films and anime, plus to backup my files. It works fantastic. This way my computer doesn't get slow because of the massive amount of movies and I can easily share my collection with friends (and ofcourse visa versa). Loading a movie from the external HDD isn't a problem at all (no lag, w/e), so for me, it's THE solution.

Reminds me of the fact my external HDD is getting full, by the way ^^.

I suppose I should have clarified.

I don't want a dedicated harddrive server.

Price is somewhat of an issue, but my father is the one getting this for me, for Christmas. I was going to ask for an internal, but I think the price of the 120 gig external ended up being cheaper than a comparable internal.

I do like the points about portability. That I could really appreciate, because then I could take it with me places, and not have to fool with disks to show my anime to folks.

External drives are usually more expensive, and usually offer slower access.

Why are you going for a 120 gig drive, a 250 gig drive might only cost a couple of £'s more (assuming a 3.5" drive for a desktop) some are even the same price. I don't know what drives your looking at but an internal should be cheaper than an external.

I use an external 160 gig firewire 800 drive for backups (bootable clone of my OS drive) and for transferring files between computers. It is kept in it's box most of the time.

I use internal drives for storing most of my data, with DVD backups. I intend to add some more drives soon though as I'm running out of space.

As for networked drives, I have a Mac Mini (can also act as an external firewire hard drive) that is used as a media center and file storage server which the other people in my flat use. But it is very slow copying files to and from it.


Really you have to ask yourself do you really need an external drive, do you need to transfer large amounts of data to other computers often, do you want a backup that isn't integrated into your computer (safer). Also you could use the external with both your computers.

Or would you rather have a larger (or cheaper), faster to access internal drive in your desktop.


Can you post what drives you've been considering buying?

I just buy a samsung sata 400gb. It is internal hd and pretty quiet.
I think, it is better if you buy a internal hd (if you have free slot on mb) than buy an external one.
First, its cheaper. Second, its faster (sataII vs usb2.0) (think also the cache). Third, you know exactly the manufacture of the hd. Fourth, the lifetime (not sure..., but internal hd have this S.M.A.R.T tech. I dont know, if the external have that too. That way, you can pretty sure know, if the hd goes bad and need to be replaced).

If you want make a network-drive. Simply buy a wireless access point. That way, you can make a central storage drive. Dont forget about the security, if you using wireless.

I think, you can also just buy an extra external casing for the internal hd. In case you need one later.

This should hold enough for you: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822154073

2.5 Terabytes, so about 2500 gigs of space.


If you're not willing to spend that much, this is pretty good: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822154610.

It holds about 120GB, which should be enough space to download like 8 complete anime series before you can burn them onto a DVD.

You could also buy a cheap and large internal hard drive, and then buy an external casing for it for about $30 - $50 US. It might be worth the price, depending on the external hard drive you're looking at.

Also, if you're in the US, Thanksgiving is just around the corner, so electronics retailers will have a lot of stuff marked down. And any online retailers based in the US are bound to have good deals on hard drives of every variety.

To tell the truth, I haven't done as much research yet, only what I'd see of that one. I'm looking seriously now at Newegg to see what I would really want.

Yeah. Internals are way cheaper, and for more space. I like the convenience that an external offers, but I dunno if that outweighs the "more space for less" factor of the internal.

Also, how does one know what type of drive (I'm talking internals now) to put into ones computer? I.e., the cache, the speed, etc. The one that is currently in here is an IDE ATA, but past that, I don't know if it's 100, 133, or something else entirely.

Without knowing anything, I assumed IDE ATA100, and found these two:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148139
A Western Digital and a Seagate. There was a Maxtor, but I'm not sure if that's going to be a good one, and I've heard mostly good things of the other two. Basically, 320 gig for $94.95 plus shipping is a good price, and something I can show my dad without him expiring. What do you all think?

Two words of caution about Maxtor:
I got a Maxtor 250 Gig Internal, bought a nice little housing, and got away for $80.00 total. Thought I was a total price bandit, and was really stoked. The drive is easy to set up as an external, and there was no problem with the software or compatibility.
Here is the problem. When I plug the drive in, it drinks my power with an inhuman quickness. I actually had to upgrade from a 450 watt power supply to a 650 to maintain full power to my graphics card and my dual processors. That was the big shocker for me. Now, the Maxtor stays powered down. My wife gave me one of her old Firelite pocket drives, which is only 80 Gigs. The Firelite is by far the smallest HD I'd ever care to have, and is really quiet. Plus, it doesn't hog power and is cross-platform from Mac to PC (which can be done with nearly any drive if you know how to rip its guts out). Granted, the Firelite is generally more expensive than the internals or the Seagate "book" drives. But it is friggin' small, and runs silent. If you want something to load and get out of the way, it might be worth looking at the size and power issue.

Regards, Aaron

aaronvps

Plus, it doesn't hog power and is cross-platform from Mac to PC (which can be done with nearly any drive if you know how to rip its guts out).

External hard drives are almost always fully Mac compatible, though some come formatted in NTFS so you can only read the drive, and would have to reformat it. I don't know what you mean about ripping it's guts out. Though I guess it would be harder to get an eSATA drive connected.

As for power, it seems very strange that the drive needed that much.


You can go for the drives which are USB powered, which get their power directly from the computer. Or you could get a drive with it's own power supply (which is what I prefer), the downsides are that you have to plug the hard drive in for it to work, so you can't use it on the go.

The Western Digital Caviar SE drives seem to have been given some very good reviews and are supposed to be very quiet. It is very likely that I'll be buying a couple of the 500 gig ones soon. Here's a REVIEW of the 500 gig SATA model, though it should be fairly similar to the 320 gig IDE one.

You do need to find out what type of connections you have for hard drives.
To do this you will need to find out what motherboard you have, then you can find out what the connections are, by looking at the manufacturers site. Or if you have the manual that comes with the motherboard it will tell you in there.

+ Maxtor is now owned by Seagate.

DeepDragoon

The Western Digital Caviar SE drives seem to have been given some very good reviews and are supposed to be very quiet. It is very likely that I'll be buying a couple of the 500 gig ones soon.

Well I've got a 250GB WD Caviar SE in my PC and indeed, it's silent, but in my experience my 200GB Maxtor Diamondmax 10 Plus was even more quiet and a little bit faster (both with similar specs, except for the size, by the way).

In my opinion internals are better in transfer term, but externals are generally more data-reliable, with auto backup mechanism and stuff.