External Harddrives

[Dan #2]

i can get a discount through a friend, so i'm buying it from Futureshop, but i don't know what to get.

 

i want to keep all of my music, pics and other files either on an external harddrive, or i migh save for a new comp, as this one is shit.

 

does anyone know roughly how many gigs i'd need for like 600+ cd's, or is it even worthwile to keep that much music on any harddrive? i would love to have my entire library on shuffle, and eventually get an mp3 player too...

 

and if i should go for an external harddrive, what brands and storage sizes are best?

 

thanks.

[Crusader]

get a 500gig harddrive if you can. external is good and the company that comes to mind starts with west?

 

sorry iv got a braaaain draaain

[Azalroth]

Uhh...hope you realize that shuffle doesn't really do such a great job of actually shuffling songs...

 

500 Gig Hard Drive

 

There's a quick link to a price for ya...

 

 

Personally I'd just wait to build a comp instead of getting an external hard drive, unless you have to do it right now.

 

EDIT: had the wrong link...it's the right one now

Edited January 24, 2007 by Azalroth

[Sparq]

Get an enormous, standard hard drive an and ADS drive enclosure. It'll be available if you ever want to install it into the system, that way.

 

edit: I said standard twice.

Edited January 24, 2007 by Sparq

[Azalroth]

I thought about that after I posted...

[Dan #2]

Get an enormous, standard hard drive an and ADS drive enclosure. It'll be available if you ever want to install it into the system, that way.

 

edit: I said standard twice.

i don't know a lot about computers. Will this be hard?

 

 

The idea of making my own computer sounds fucking awesome, and i have the money to get started. is it impossible for a beginner to do? i do learn best by doing, so this sounds fun.

 

 

And as for shuffle, i do notice it's usually clumps of artists, but what do you mean that it doesn't do a good job of actually shuffling? is there a reason, or a formula behind it?

[Sparq]

You can instlal a hard drive into a drive enclosure if you can use a screwdriver. Then it's just USB...plug it in and go.

 

As for building a computer....a beginner can do it provided they do some research. Aside from making sure all components will be compatible, the most important thing to know is probably proper instllation of the processor. Not hard, but if you do it wrong, a modern Pentium can burn itself out in about two seconds.

[Azalroth]

As for the shuffle business, I find that most programs...and I've used a lot of media programs, start looking like they are shuffling but then after a time it just repeats teh same songs it has already played. Typically just continues to play a certain number of songs...

[Sparq]

Most ramdomisers do that. My iRiver players tend to suck at shuffling too.

[Azalroth]

Nothing is truly random when it comes to computers...until quantum computers comes into play anway

[Dan #2]

well this seems like a neat idea.

 

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetai...ogon=&langid=EN

 

i came across this bad boy, as a badn-aid solutions, more or less, i need to get everything off my laptop harddrive before this bitch crashes. is this any good? how much would this ADS drive enclosur cost and how would i go about getting my laptop to recognize it? just with usb cords?

 

 

and the shuffle thing, i think you're right, i definitely do hear a lot of the same stuff, but i wasn't sure if that was because i've never had more than 500 or so songs on here, and they were mostly full albums. iTunes has a dealie in the advanced option section to make the shuffle more random, as for whether it works...

 

thanks for all the help guys, i really want to learn this shit. Sparq, how do i make sure the parts are compatible, and, this may be a stretch, but would you be able to compare the price of building a certain computer to buying essentially the same thing in a store? like would an average $1500 store-bought comp cost less than $1300?

[Sparq]

Regarding the ADS enclosure....I have the small one at it cost about $50 from staples. If you have windows XP it will recognise it as a drive as soon as you plug it in. 2000 should be the same, but no guarantee.

[Azalroth]

That should work, when I bought my ADS it was something like 70 bucks...but that was a while ago, I imagine it's gone down in price.

 

As for the computer price, if your not afraid of ordering parts online you can get higher end computers for the same price as a POS from Future crap.

 

As for the compatibility, research, research, and more research. Make sure that they are compatible, most Motherboards and their manufacturer's provide the necessary information that you will need.

[Dan #2]

A) how does one go about choosing a motherboarrd? i need somewhere to start.

 

B) if i get a harddrive, enclosure and plug it in, can i install iTunes on that harddrive and play music through my comp or does the program need to be on the comp to access the files on the second harddrive?

[Shakakahn]

anton you should consider making a tech section for these kinds of threads. because there's a lot of them

[saturnine]

if you go external, make sure you get firewire transfer - it's way faster than usb and it'll help greatly when transferring large amounts at a time.

 

as for the size of the drive, it depends how your files will be encoded. mp3s don't dake up a lot of room, but they sound like shit. the way i rip my cds leaves me at approx. 2-3 albums per gb.

 

if you build your own computer, you can make it as simple or as complicated as you'd like, but you can build it to serve the exact purpose you want it to serve. i've built every computer i've ever had and i couldn't do it any other way. it's more personal.

[Sparq]

Yep....at the moment, firewire is faster. I believe the next generation of USB is expected to out-do firewire, but who knows how long that will last...

 

A: First you'll need to know what else you want in the way of sound, video, memory...number of slots available for different kinds of cards (PCI, AGP, PCI-E, RAM slots, etc) are dictated by the otherboard....as is the type and series of processors which will be available for that board. Ideally you figure out essentially what you want in the way of expansion cards, type and number of drives, memory, and processor and then look for motherboards which will suit those requirements. Then a power supply to run everything and a case to hold it all together.

 

B: You probably could install iTunes on that drive (though I have never tried it) provided that was the only computer you were likely to use it on (it'll probably need to put some registry entries into the drive which has your operating system), the transfer rate of the USB/firewire link was high enough, and the drive letter of the external drive never changes. I wouldn't suggest it, personally.

 

My own system currently contains:

2x 250 GB in a mirroring RAID-1 array (automatic replication of the entire drive in case one fails and a better seek time as it reads different sections of the same data set simultaneously off two drives)

1x 120 GB to which I manually back up my music and pictures at random intervals

1x 80GB external which I use for transfering stuff to other computers

Edited January 24, 2007 by Sparq

[saturnine]

damn, i thought my 600gb capacity was going to be the king of the bored.

 

but you have 250gb of essentially unusable space, so i win!

[cweb]

if you go external, make sure you get firewire transfer - it's way faster than usb and it'll help greatly when transferring large amounts at a time.

true, if the firewire is 1394b (most commonly called firewire 800, though not all 1394b transfers at around 800Mbit/s- some are faster).

 

otherwise, USB Hi-Speed (aka USB 2.0) is faster.

 

source

 

however, these are all theoretical speeds anyway. actual transfer rates are also dependent on CPU, RAM, and drive speed.

[Sparq]

damn, i thought my 600gb capacity was going to be the king of the bored.

 

but you have 250gb of essentially unusable space, so i win!

Heh...You win alright. You win more than you bargained for (drama).

 

Anyway, I used to run the drives seperate because I was lazy for about 6 months. I finally reformatted and built the array in...uh...august I guess.

[saturnine]

i would setup a raid array, but i can't see my drives failing. i'm always looking for more space and i don't think i could have a drive just sitting there with nothing on it. it would break my heart.

[Guest jsunC]

how do you guys use up all that memory? Just constantly downloading movies or what?

[saturnine]

about 600 lossless cds and 40 full dvds

[Guest jsunC]

lordeh.. My dad's started to get into the whole downloading a burning dvd's thing.. He's gone through over 200 DVD's since christmas, the man's addicted. He deletes the movies after he burns them though

[Sparq]

I've alctually still got alot of open capacity. I got the twin 250s because I nearly lost everything in that 120GB with my previous computer...twice. Drive started clicking and corrupting system files.

 

Of course, since I built the array I haven't had that problem, even with the problematic drive...