Bill Gates the Genius!?(external HD?)

[Burnie Burnerson]

Bill Gates was in Canada this week addressing some undergrads. Apparently he and his" brainiacs "at microlimp think that this latest generation of high definition DVD's will be the last of this type of storage. What allready!? I still get a lot of use out of my 8-Track don't you guys? On this very topic, I have a 200Gig HD and was thinking this was enough? yeh um it's not OK? I've been looking at external HD? Does anyone out there in Double U Double U Double U dotland have any suggestions or experience with these ?Are they as fast as the internal type?

[kosmiq]

Bill Gates - yeah that dude is kinda smart, considering that he bought DOS for 50.000$ or whatever it was and became one of the richest men of the world.

External HD's - They are not as fast as they most often uses USB2 so the same speeds is not possible. However I think that external HDD is very useful to easy cary along data to other PC's and general storage. I have a Lacie Porsche 250gb USB2 myself and I have no complaints about that one.

[spidross01]

Yeah mate, usb2.0 will not be as fast as an internal, but as kosmiq said they are very handy, i use a USB2 maxtor barracuda 200gb, ideal for transferring data between pcs without wasting discs, also VERY handy when reinstalling your operating system!! Just drop everything you want to keep onto the HD then wipe your PC, when you have finished just recconect and drag it all back to it's original location!!

Thats the main use of mine bud oh and my ipod music collection, couldn't face having to redo that.

Definately would not be without, think i paid £80 inc p&p for mine from ebay!

[Burnie Burnerson]

You know how windows has a setting to use compressed or uncompressed data? I take it you can still compress your data like normal right? I seen a couple 300 gig bee-uties around 350$cdn. Defragging must be a chore for you guys or not?

[spidross01]

Yeah matey, will work with both compressed and uncompressed, windows sees it as another hard drive installed, it doesn't really care if it is external or not, the only thing affected is the transfer speed, but if you buy a fast enough HD then you won't really worry about it

As for the defragging mate, i have had the drive approximately 10months and windows still says i don't need to defrag, but i do anyway and takes approximately an hour, normally start defragging just before i go out and leave it. I store all my mp3's docs and pics on it, doesn't use up my internal space and can access when i want

I would definately not be without it!! Also have a look on ebay, i have just found an Maxtor 300gb external drive with 16mb cache with all power supplies, cables etc for approx $210 canadian, the exchange rate i used was approximately $2 cnd to the £1, mate that is cheap as chips as they say in Uk. I paid the same price for a 200gb 10 months ago and thought that was good.

Honerstly mate they are a godsend and once you get one you will wondwer what you did without one!!!

if you want an ebay address for them let me know

[Luciel]

Originally Posted by spidross01

Yeah matey, will work with both compressed and uncompressed, windows sees it as another hard drive installed, it doesn't really care if it is external or not, the only thing affected is the transfer speed, but if you buy a fast enough HD then you won't really worry about it

Doesn't matter how fast the hard drive is as it will always be limited by the usb2 speed which is always slower than internal hdd speeds.

[DABhand]

Go for SATA only if your motherboard has SATA conns on it. Dont buy a SATA PCI card, as you will be limited to PCI Bus speeds.

[spidross01]

Originally Posted by Luciel

Doesn't matter how fast the hard drive is as it will always be limited by the usb2 speed which is always slower than internal hdd speeds.

think i said earlier in my previous post my heartys that it will be limited to the speed of usb2,

also if he is only looking for an EXTERNAL drive for data etc then whats the point of a sata drive? He is still limited to the usb transfer speed!

[Burnie Burnerson]

Would it be better to use my external for my movie and music collection and keep game files on my WD2000 HDD? Or does that matter? Part of my thinking is that this will also be my backup for my internal HDD? How does that work exactly?

[spidross01]

Yeah mate thats the general idea and works really well for me, i put all my data files, music, backups, and any other bits that i don't use regularly.
I use the Main hard drive(internal one) to run all the software games etc.

That way i can take all my bits with me if i need to or if anything goes totally wrong with my internal then i have got it all safe and sound on another drive, presuming that is that that doesn't suffer the same fate!! LOL!

I also wipe my system totally every 3-4 months and with everything on the external drive i don't need to worry about losing everything when i do the wipe, just turn it off and then format the internal!!! Easy.

As you said you were thinking of using it as backup then that is no probs, you can copy all your documents, files etc even game saves and settings onto the external. So until you delete the files on your main drive you will have duplicate. I always keep mine connected and on so access is ok, let us know how you get on