External Hard drive for laptop

[StraightPipe]

my roomate is looking for an external to store videos (DivX).

I've always had internal drives, and dont know squat about external. I see USB and one RJ45 (ethernet) at newegg

will these work for playing movies?, he doesnt want to have to move them from the external to the laptop to play vids.

(looking in the $100 range, i think), but cheap is good.Edit: looking at newegg, seems like $150 is the low end.


he's got USB1 and ethernet (i dont think it's got 1394, but i'm not positive) it's a Pentium 3 something with 512 DDR by Acer

what are his options?

 

[LarryS]

I used a firewire drive with my Inspiron and it was fast enough to do basically anything an internal drive would do.

 

[DaveSimmons]

USB 1.1 is a little slow for MPEG2 but divx is probably fine. USB 2.0 is plenty fast assuming the laptop port is 2.0.

RJ45 = network attached storage = mini-server. Good for workgroups / multiple people but overkill and extra work for just one person. Fast enough though.

 

[StraightPipe]

cost?

what does firewire look like? I'm not sure if he's got it. (will google)

 

[DaveSimmons]

> cost?

Hot Deals. Buy.com. Newegg.com.

USB is cheapest at a given size, many now are USB + firewire, RJ45 = costs the most since you're buying an embedded server.

 

[StraightPipe]

I'm noticing a big difference in prices in these USB drives. I know with regular IDE drives there the $/gig ratio that usually holds true (you pay extra for things like 8meg cache)

but I'm seeing 20gig drives for $250 and 60gig drives for $150.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Besides (USB, firewire, RJ45) and (capacity) you also need to pay attention to drive size (2.5", 3.5").

2.5" drives cost much more per GB, but some of them don't need a power brick, while all 3.5" drives do.

There are major-brand drives (Maxtor, WD? Seagate?) at buy.com that won't be the cheapest but should give you an idea of the price range (barring Hot Deals).

 

[StraightPipe]

what about 3.5 enlcosures? it looks like i can get one form new egg for $25ish, if i could slap and 80giger IDE in there that would be cheaper.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: StraightPipe
what about 3.5 enlcosures? it looks like i can get one form new egg for $25ish, if i could slap and 80giger IDE in there that would be cheaper.

just check that it's USB 2.0. Also, stick with 120 GB or smaller, some people have had trouble getting 160+ GB drives working properly.

 

[StraightPipe]

the enclosures are 2.0, but his laptop is older and likely only 1.0.

I was wondering if it would still be worth while to get an 8meg drive, or will it make a difference going through the enclosure?

(BTW, thanks for the help guys ;beer

 

[DaveSimmons]

>I was wondering if it would still be worth while to get an 8meg drive, or will it make a difference going through the enclosure?
Not a bit, USB 1.x at 12 mbit/s is much slower than even the slowest 5400 RPM drive you can buy today (120+ mbit/s). Also video playback is streaming one file, so cache doesn't really help.

 

[StraightPipe]

hmmm, maybe i can find a 5400...
how big did 5400 get?
seems I can get a WD 40gig 5400 2meg for $54 + 0 shipping from newegg here
and an 3.5 enclosure for $31.99+5 shipping from newegg

so thats $91 bucks for 40 gigs

or the same enclosure with a WD 80g 7200 2 meg for $70 at newegg
for a total of $106.99!

sounds much better than a prebuilt external WD 80GIG for $167 at new egg.