Hey gang. A friend of mine has a Dell laptop and I just set him up with a 120gb external hard drive. Now he saw how easy it is to do DVD burning and was wondering if he could do it on his laptop. It is possible, but there are some issues.
Laptop specs: Celeron 2.4ghz, 20gb hard drive, 256mb ram, DVD reader/cdrw. 2 x USB2.0 ports (I think...)
External hard drive: USB 2.0 Bytec enclosure, WD 120gb drive.
Potential External DVDRW: USB 2.0 Bytec enclosure, maybe a NEC 8x burner from Newegg.
Software: DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter.
The biggest problem is that the laptop only has a 20gb hard drive. Windows XP and the other necessary apps take up 4 - 5 gb of space I am guessing. That *may* leave enough space to 1. decrypt the 9gb dvd; and 2. shrink it. If I can do this all on the internal hard drive, then burning via the USB2.0 port should be fine.
What will happen if the 20gb hard drive is full and he needs to either decrypt or shrink the dvd to the external 120gb hard drive? The hard drive is already going through the USB port, which eats up a fair amount of cpu time to transfer the data. If he decrypts to the USB hard drive, then trys to shrink to the laptop drive, the CPU will suffer because it is trying to shrink and transfer the data via USB all at the same time. If he gets it shrunk to the USB hard drive, how well will it burn to the USB dvdrw if it too is on a USB port? Any data transfer issues with both devices on USB?
Anyway, I know this is long winded, but what would you suggest? Have any of you done something similar? How did it all work out in the end? Was it worth the hassle?
Laptop specs: Celeron 2.4ghz, 20gb hard drive, 256mb ram, DVD reader/cdrw. 2 x USB2.0 ports (I think...)
External hard drive: USB 2.0 Bytec enclosure, WD 120gb drive.
Potential External DVDRW: USB 2.0 Bytec enclosure, maybe a NEC 8x burner from Newegg.
Software: DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter.
The biggest problem is that the laptop only has a 20gb hard drive. Windows XP and the other necessary apps take up 4 - 5 gb of space I am guessing. That *may* leave enough space to 1. decrypt the 9gb dvd; and 2. shrink it. If I can do this all on the internal hard drive, then burning via the USB2.0 port should be fine.
What will happen if the 20gb hard drive is full and he needs to either decrypt or shrink the dvd to the external 120gb hard drive? The hard drive is already going through the USB port, which eats up a fair amount of cpu time to transfer the data. If he decrypts to the USB hard drive, then trys to shrink to the laptop drive, the CPU will suffer because it is trying to shrink and transfer the data via USB all at the same time. If he gets it shrunk to the USB hard drive, how well will it burn to the USB dvdrw if it too is on a USB port? Any data transfer issues with both devices on USB?
Anyway, I know this is long winded, but what would you suggest? Have any of you done something similar? How did it all work out in the end? Was it worth the hassle?
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