Computer Question

[indiana_j]

Since the internet at home is a bit eeeehhh, I've known that I need to invest in an external hard drive if I ever want to download new music again.

Basically, I'm looking at something that's big enough to store all of my music on it (over 3,000 songs, so not a whole lot) and be able to download other things onto it from the Eee so I can truck it back to the house and upload it to the main computer.

What size should I get and what brand is good?

Comments

[seraangel.livejournal.com]

Depends on the amount you want to spend. I brought a 1 terabyte drive recently for under $200 which just slots into any USB port and has an internal power source so doesn't need to be externally powered. It's about the size of my palm as well, so it's not bulky at all.

[indiana-j.livejournal.com]

While I really like the idea of a self-powering, teeny one, a little under $200 is a bit much, even with all the money I'll be saving, sadly. My Eee was only $300 and change, after all. ;)

[resplendissante.livejournal.com]

I'd say for that, you'd be perfectly well off with a cheap 250GB one from Best Buy or Costco - you could probably get one for like $40-60 these days. I have bought the most random external hard drives possible and never ever had a problem.

[indiana-j.livejournal.com]

$40-$60 is a great price! I'd even be willing to go a little, but not much, higher. I'll have to go check out Best Buy around the 1st when I'll have some extra cash. Thanks for that! I was afraid they'd all be expensive.

[rexlapinii.livejournal.com]

There's ten or so drives listed on Best Buy's site--hopefully that link works--for $50ish, and even more once you get into the $60-$70 range. Hard drives don't tend to be wildly expensive, thankfully.

[silvanis.livejournal.com]

Depending on how much other stuff you want to move back and forth, a flash drive may be your best bet. You can get a 64Gb flash drive for around $100 or a 32Gb for around $40.

[indiana-j.livejournal.com]

I think I'd like something that would actually house the music, along with allowing me to transfer things over.

[silvanis.livejournal.com]

I think you misunderstood me; I'm talking about something like this:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Kingston+-+DataTraveler+101+Generation+2+32GB+USB+2.0+Flash+Drive/1701018.p?id=1218282103423&skuId=1701018

3,000 songs should be about 10-15 gig, so that leaves you a lot of space for transfering files around. I used one to play my music at work without any problems (other than people thinking I have wierd taste) ;)

I'm just tossing that out there because then you don't have to worry about power cords or dropping it :)

[jim-smith.livejournal.com]

I definitely recommend something small, that can be powered by the USB cable so you don't have to fool with a separate power cord.

In terms of storage size, I've got over 3000 songs on my computer and that's about 20 GB of data, so even the tiniest external hard drive should hold that. There are flash drives that can easily hold that much as well, but GB-for-GB they're more expensive--there's a price vs. size tradeoff and it's up to you which is more important.

If you're trying not to spend too much, you might think you should just buy the cheapest external hard drive, but a 320 GB model might only be ten dollars more than a 250 GB one from the same manufacturer. It's kind of like checking the price-per-gallon of milk--you have to do some math to find the best value.

To pick out something like this I'd go to newegg.com. They have a wide assortment of external hard drives, and a lot of options for filtering your search by the manufacturer, storage capacity, price, and so on. They also provide out-of-the-box pictures of most products, which I find helpful. Even if you end up driving to Best Buy, it can be useful to window-shop at Newegg first.

A good aggregator site for this...

[hex-16.livejournal.com]

http://gb4less.com/
The premise of the site is to show the products in each category with the lowest cost per GB of storage. This won't necessarily hit your portability requirements (though if you click on the category, you might be able to narrow it down with some search terms), but you might want to file it away even if it's not helpful right now.

[celendra.livejournal.com]

I end up having to buy these a lot for work, so I'll just throw in my two cents that I've had a LOT of the Seagate ones go bad on me, and their replacement policy during warranty is pretty draconian (as in you have to pay them to send you the box that they want you to send it back to them in - and if you don't, you void the warranty). I was going to recommend Maxtor, but it seems like they and Seagate have now combined into one company (dammit!).

This Toshiba is $50 for 320GB - it looks nice and portable, too. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149215

-- Cel