Any downside to external hard drives?

[vi5]

I'm thinking about buyin an inexpensive hard drive just to store all my pictures and also converting all of my cds to mp3 format.

I'd prefer to get an external USB/Firewire connected hard drive. Probably an 80 Gig one.

Any potential downfalls to doing this? I just don't want to store all this excess data on my computer itself. Does it slow your system down more to have an external drive connected to it or does it slow it down more to have all that data stored on the C: drive of your computer?

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Don't know of any downside

Plus, if you ever have the feds knocking on your door it's a quick job to smash the hell out of it, as opposed to having to "quickly" open the computer and unscrew the harddrive and smash the hell out of it.

or

if you have to evacuate your home, it's an easy to matter to grab the drive and have all your important stuff saved.

Though the data transfer rate won't be as fast as an internal drive, it's still fast enough even for playing video or music off of it. They won't be the speed demons, necessarily, that your internal drives are. But the newer ones, I don't know - they get faster and faster, and firewire is pretty damn fast.

[htuttle]

2. I have 4 of them on one of my iMacs

Don't notice any huge drawbacks. The firewire bus is fast enough that it seems as fast as the internal drive.

Stay away from Western Digital drives, however. I have two dead ones -- no warning, data lost, all recovery efforts failed.

LaCie seems good. QPS/Que has been good for me as well.

I don't know if Windows handles firewire devices as well as Mac OS X does, however.

[Abaques]

14. Western Digital's have been fine for us...

My organization has 5 or 6 of them and we have had no troubles.

[Old and In the Way]

24. Glad to here, I just bought a 120G/7200 to replace my Adacom

that just STB. It crapped out 3 days after the 1 year warrenty. Luckily I had most of my business data backed up on my computer harddrive.

[GOPisEvil]

3. Well. As long as there's no space issue, there's no downside.

At least none that I am aware of.

[Florida_Geek]

4. There is a big difference between

USB and Firewire. Be sure is get a firewire drive. It is always better to have two drives vs 1, as long as you do not put your pagefile on a USB drive :)

[Florida_Geek]

7. One other thing

OK I am CHEAP, I use Windows Briefcase to back up all my "main" data to a second hard drive. I also back up some to a CD.

[Cooley Hurd]

11. Even better... get a external SCSI drive...

You might have a SCSI port already on your computer (not common, but it's possible). If not then you'll have to add a SCSI card (not expensive). I'd avoid the USB drive, real s-l-o-w. Firewire is better, but for speed, SCSI is the best.

[Abaques]

15. SCSI is dead.

Firewire is perfectly fine speedwise. Nobody uses SCSI except in servers now adays. And SCSI is still ALOT more expensive.

And USB 2.0 is not the dog that USB 1.0/1.1 was.

We use usb/firewire drives all the time to do big data transfers, and they are much much easier to use then SCSI drives would be.

[Cooley Hurd]

21. No it's not...

SCSI is still a viable method for external devices. Firewire is okay, speed-wise, but not as fast as SCSI. As far as cost, if you shop around, you'll find that Adaptec sells SCSI cards for under $100.

That said, I'd lean towards firewire for one reason only - many devices (digital camcorders, iPods, etc) use firewire ports, where your SCSI port would be good only for external drives and scanners.

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. Let me also add that SCSI is dead, dead dead dead dead

Stay away from SCSI

It's going the way of serial and RS-232.

[Cooley Hurd]

22. Not for external HD's...

Read my above post... :hi:

[Rabrrrrrr]

25. Nope, dead dead dead

In another year or two, SCSI will be gone and unsupported

Firewire is the better interface, and even that will, I'm sure, in a few years be gone.

No, SCSI became obselete about 3 years ago, even though it's still around. it's just dying slowly, like parallel port connections to printers and the RS-232

[Cooley Hurd]

27. Maybe for what you use...

But we still use SCSI for peripherals like scanners because of the high volume scanning our clients require.

Sorry, not dead, so there! ;)

[Rabrrrrrr]

30. Please note that I did not say no one is using it

Obviously, some people still are

I'm saying it's a dead technology in terms of it's obsolete and will be gone soon and will go the way of the dodo.

Hell, I was still using RS-232 long after it's time, and also used parallel ports for my printers until about 2-3 years ago. But even though I was still using them, they were dead.

[Cooley Hurd]

31. If people are still using SCSI, then it, by definition, is still alive...

Aren't I a PIA? :D

[smiley_glad_hands]

5. Its slower but you may not be able to notice it.

[DenverDem]

6. My experience

Maxtor has been good. (200 gig used for video editing and music.)

EZ Quest died on me. (Massive drag, much lost work.)

[mikey_1962]

8. Not really...

[Champion Jack]

9. I have 4 on the Mac system

I use them for editing with Final Cut and they work great.
I use the EZ quest cobras.

[flaminlib]

10. What does it take to install firewire?

Ive been looking at that too. Im on an old Windows machine with one PCI slot left. I have a USB port but I was told not to use it for a hard drive. I have a box of floppy's and cd's that I would like to get rid of.

[Florida_Geek]

12. All it takes is

a PCI slot. Like adding a modem.

[flaminlib]

13. Thanks....software involved or, how does that work?

Also, once the firewire port is installed, will it automatically find a new drive?

[Dead_Parrot]

16. What version of windows you got? n/t

[Abaques]

17. Assuming that you have win2k or winXP... yes.

If you have win98 or winME... then maybe.... but if you have win98 or winME then you should probably get a new system.

[flaminlib]

28. 98, and yes.. i NEED a new machine

actually, i have 2. They run good but they both have celerons. Im due for an upgrade but, damn its expensive. Will firewire still work?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

18. Of course.

Every physical object has a downside. And an upside, a leftside, a rihgtside, a backside, and a frontside.

[Abaques]

20. The definetive buying guide...

External drives are pretty good now-a-days. Here are some things to look for:

Buy a drive that has both USB and Firewire connections. Trust me, its worth having the flexibility.

If you have a mac, then absolutely buy a drive with firewire. All newer macs have them and it works great.

Brands to look at:

Seagate
Western Digital
Maxtor
Lacie

Don't buy any other brands.

To preface my opinions, I am a helpdesk manager at the U of M. We have alot of external drives and we use them alot.

[vi5]

23. Thanks. Thing is that all the stuff I will store on it....

Will still exist in other formats. Right now I have all my music on CD and I burn mp3's right to cd format so they don't take up space on my computer. Same with all of my pictures. But it's a bit of a pain having to load up discs every time I need access to something. So I figure if I load everything to an external hard drive then when I need them it's easier 1 stop shopping. But I don't need it to be super fast or even fool proof since I will still have all of this stuff in other formats as well.

[Dead_Parrot]

26. If you want maximum storage, I'd suggest...

http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/external/onetouch/index.htm
300Mb for £300? Groovy...

Firewire & USB versions - Poke around...

[democracyindanger]

29. I did what you want to do

Got an external drive to store my media--mp3, video, etc. I got a Maxtor, which has worked out fine, with just one minor complaint; It has no power switch, so the cord must be disconnected when I want to turn it off. It's just a small thing--but a hassle nonetheless. It's also a bit loud, but I'm a bit deaf so it evens out.