PopTodd Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 I don't have an external hard drive at all.Looking to get one.What's a good amount of storage, and what's a good price for that?Anything that I need to look for as a cool feature, or as a warning sign? I saw a 3TB drive at Best Buy today for $150, but looking at how much it is for less space on other hard drives (1.5 TB for $125 to 150), that makes me think that there might be something wrong with this one.? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Scott Gyrrr Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Is it for back up, portability or you've filled up your internals? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
PopTodd Posted June 9, 2011 Author Share Posted June 9, 2011 Back up and portability. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
lamradio Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 I'd definitely go with a flash based (solid state) USB drive. My wife has one that she takes to school and back that is 300 gigs. It's very fast, portable (a little larger than a wallet) and you could drop it out of a moving car and it would still work (haven't tried this though). I wish I remembered the freakin model name though.. If I remember I'll grab it this evening and let you know. But in general; anything like I have described above, you really can't go wrong. It's important to go with flash based drives for what you are wanting to do. No moving parts so the chances of it failing are slim to none. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
tinnitus photography Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 flash-based will be more expensive, so the two items you need to define are disk size, and budget. i've got about 8 external drives (all regular HDD, no flash-based) and they all work pretty well, though i have had a couple of failures (Western Digital and Seagate, fwiw). Quote Link to post Share on other sites
howdjadoo Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Brand? I did go digital completely about 2 years ago just to get rid of those dust gathering CD's and ehh my advice 1TB(those things do have platters containing 500 gig at the most) So whenever things go wrong you wouln't loose everything.Another 1TB HDD as a backup ofcourse in case of failure.If you comprimise to Flac(average 450 MB for an cd )you're at least good for 2000 albums of storage to go.And on and on you go. I'd go for Samsung Storyline 1.5 TB (at the max)or Seagate. Over 1 Tb's are way too expensive,like a tv set with 3k channels(and nothing on) Can't wait till SSD is payable Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mr. Heartbreak Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 I have a Western Digital WD Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive. Just bought it a couple weeks ago from Amazon for under $100.00. It got an average of 4 stars from 1,600 reviewers, which is about as good as it gets. It was pretty easy to set up, even though with a Mac you have to reformat the drive. There were several discussions on the Amazon page about how to do that, so even a technophobe like me was able to set it up with no problem. I downloaded pretty much everything on the Mac to it (about 400 gigs) in less than a day. As far as portability, it wouldn't exactly fit in my pocket, but it was definitely smaller than I expected. So far, I'm extremely pleased. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
tinnitus photography Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 Over 1 Tb's are way too expensive,like a tv set with 3k channels(and nothing on) huh? too expensive compared to what? this has been my goto drive:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822207017 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
howdjadoo Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 You hit me with your rhythm sticks,stuff is gettin'cheaper by the day Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Winston Legthigh Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 It always amazes me how memory capacity just gets cheaper and cheaper. I remember saving up my paper route cash (about $13/week, I think) to buy the Atari 400 (with 8k of memory!!). Ah, the days of programming in BASIC. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
howdjadoo Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 It always amazes me how memory capacity just gets cheaper and cheaper. I remember saving up my paper route cash (about $13/week, I think) to buy the Atari 400 (with 8k of memory!!). Ah, the days of programming in BASIC And yes playin'choplifter,frogman etc oh boy I'm getting old Quote Link to post Share on other sites
The High Heat Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 I remember saving up my paper route cash (about $13/week, I think) to buy the Atari 400 (with 8k of memory!!). Ha! When I was 13 I bought a used Atari and a box of games with money from my 3 paper routes (had damn near the entire neighborhood, I did)! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
u2roolz Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 I would recommend staying away from the Lacie External Hard Drives. I've had countless problems of the blue l.e.d. lights being on, but not showing up on my desktop and a bunch of exclamation points on my iTunes. In other words, there are a lot of connection problems. I even had to send it out and they "fixed it" and it worked fine for a little bit, but then the issue came up again. They only send you an installation disk, so it gets complicated to try and remember what tests to do to get it online again. It hasn't been showing up for 3 weeks and I'm too defeated to fix it. I'll get around to it soon enough. And it doesn't get fixed by a simple unplug and plug it back in etc. Don't worry, folks! The music isn't gone. It just simply isn't there. Lacie 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ih8music Posted June 9, 2011 Share Posted June 9, 2011 It always amazes me how memory capacity just gets cheaper and cheaper. I remember saving up my paper route cash (about $13/week, I think) to buy the Atari 400 (with 8k of memory!!). Ah, the days of programming in BASIC. I remember being THRILLED to pay $149 for a 150MB drive. Less than a buck a MB -- we were amazed how cheap it all was! Now you can get a 3TB drive for that much... absolutely mind-blowing. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Scott Gyrrr Posted June 10, 2011 Share Posted June 10, 2011 Bit off topic but the new Apple Thunderbolt i/o is gonna be great for music recording. Optical don't cha know. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
PopTodd Posted June 10, 2011 Author Share Posted June 10, 2011 This is good stuff.Thanks for all the info.See if I get a Best Buy gift card for Dad's Day, and I will read, and re-read this thread before heading in.Rock! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
cryptique Posted June 10, 2011 Share Posted June 10, 2011 I use an external hard drive at work for all of my music. I think the one I currently have is ~750 GB. It's about time for me to buy a new, larger drive and copy everything from the old one onto it. I keep my old drives, mothballed, in case I have a failure with a newer one -- that way I don't lose absolutely everything. By keeping my music on an external drive that I own, it never really mingles with my employer's network or hardware (aside from being played through their sound card), and that seems to keep them happy. Obviously different employers have different policies about such things -- I just try to avoid any "improper" or "inappropriate" use of company assets. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
lizish Posted June 10, 2011 Share Posted June 10, 2011 can't stress how much I like the Dobro. http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Data%20Robotics,%20Inc./DRDS2A21W10/?utm_source=nextag&utm_medium=shoppingengine&utm_campaign=productads easy to put to use those older hard drives as additional backup. Of course you are limited to the size of your smallest drive, but new ones are so cheap, it's not much of a concern. Bad part is trying to remember to swap out a drive and store it in a different place. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
howdjadoo Posted June 10, 2011 Share Posted June 10, 2011 can't stress how much I like the Dobro. http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Data%20Robotics,%20Inc./DRDS2A21W10/?utm_source=nextag&utm_medium=shoppingengine&utm_campaign=productads easy to put to use those older hard drives as additional backup. Of course you are limited to the size of your smallest drive, but new ones are so cheap, it's not much of a concern. Bad part is trying to remember to swap out a drive and store it in a different place. 10 TB, are you a member of the"scene"? involved in PnP business? better get an seedbox instead then.(10tb=10.000 gb=25.000 cd's=~250.000 songs(all in glorious flac, how about mp.3's? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
lizish Posted June 10, 2011 Share Posted June 10, 2011 10 TB, are you a member of the"scene"? involved in PnP business? better get an seedbox instead then.(10tb=10.000 gb=25.000 cd's=~250.000 songs(all in glorious flac, how about mp.3's? I have an older one with and only use a couple bays. Currently have a 1tb and a variety of 750/500 gigs drives. Use Flacs/apple lossless and don't really like MP3s except to check out some new things. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
cryptique Posted June 12, 2011 Share Posted June 12, 2011 can't stress how much I like the Dobro. My first thought was "what a cool name," and then I saw that it's actually "Drobo." Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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