External HardDrive sizes?!?

vonniec

Hey,

So the boyfriends been hinting about getting an external hard drive for christmas for the past while... Only prob is, I have no idea what size would be best?! He wants it for storing movies, music, games and man stuff like that I guess?! Is a 1tb the best size or would i get away with a 500gb? How much space would one movie take up??

Thanks in advance!

M.J.M.C

General rule,

The more space you can afford the better

Size of a movie depends on its quality, they can vary from under 1GB to over 10GB - but buy him the most storage space you can afford

vonniec

I was afraid you'd say that! :P Hardly know the best place to buy for value/quality??

M.J.M.C

Look at it this way,

He won't be upset with a 500GB drive, and he wont think you're the best thing ever cause you bought him the dearest drive. He'll be happy with anything you give him.

Just stick to what you can afford and he'll like it. Xmas isn't all about the presents (or the birth of Santa)

tman

500GB should be fine, but will soon fill up...
I'd say you should really aim for 1TB

Try having a search through the bargain alerts forum, there have been quite a few threads about external HDDs recently...

Personally I'd love something like this but I'm sure that'd be well outside your budget...

coylemj

If he's going to use it for movies then the chances are that he'll bring it to his mates to exchange movies and he'll end up needing hundreds of GB of space so don't even consider anything less than 1TB.

elara is a good place to look and you can collect from Park West.. www.elara.ie

vonniec

Thanks a mil!!

So, another question...is a desktop or portable one best???
I know...I'm a computer-tard!!

M.J.M.C

An external hard drive like this one is portable as it's covered and will come with its own power plug

An internal one like this is to go inside a desktop.

Internal ones are cheaper yet in a way not very portable. If he's been hinting for an "external hard drive" you can assume he means one like the first link

Best of luck

vonniec

haha, yeah, i figured as much! on that site coylemj sent though, it gave me an option of 'desktop' or 'portable' external harddrives... does it really matter?

M.J.M.C

From what i can see:

Theses ones are all to go inside a desktop

These are all the external portable ones.

Both good sites komplett and elara and you can pickup the item yourself.

Don't be worrying you'll be grand.

bhickey

I think she means external desktop (the ones that typically stand on a desk) or external portable (the little ones that you can carry around easily)

Voodu Child

There's two main types of external hard-drives:

Portable - They use small 2.5" drives (same as a laptop) and don't need a separate power supply.

Desktop - Much bigger, they use 3.5" desktop drives and need their own power brick.

Desktop drives are much cheaper per GB. If its going to be sitting on the desk all the time, thats the one you want. But if you're moving them around a lot they are a hassle, you've got to bring the power brick with them.

Portable drives are handier if you're moving them from place to place, and they're smaller so for example you could slip them into the side pocket of your laptop bag, don't need a bulky power brick.
However, for a 500GB one you'll pay twice as much as you would for a 500GB desktop external.

Honestly its impossible to say which is 'better'. You'd need to have an idea of what he wants it for. Might be best just to ask him.

bonzodog2

I've heard that the 'portable' variety, with 2.5" drive inside, have a certain amount of automatic protection against being dropped, although not foolproof !

coylemj

You won't get a 1TB drive in any form factor other than 3.5" but I'd bypass that portable/external distinction on the elara website because whoever is categorising the disk drives has some of the larger drives under 'portable' even though they are clearly the bigger drives that need an external power supply.

On www.elara.ie ignore the portable/external selection and click on 501GB+ for the large capacity drives, then click on 1TB which will list all of the 1TB drives, you can then click on the Price Low-High link (under the black bar) to sort with the cheapest 1TB drive at the top of the screen.

I'd recommend the Western Digital 1TB 7200 RPM drive here for Eur 76.23, it's not the cheapest 1TB drive but it spins at 7,200 RPM which means it will significantly outperform the cheaper drives which are probably 5,400 RPM since they don't quote a spin speed...

http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=MME1411017

Or there is a 2TB Buffalo drive for just over 100 here...

http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=ECE2020329

enda1

OP you need to be looking at getting at a minimum 1tb, try push to 1.5 or 2 though.

Try consider average of 1gb per movie. Though this is hugely depending on the quality level he rips/downloads. So if its BluRay then think like 8 times this size.

Music is almost a non issue, along with games etc. Its really the videos that will fill up a drive.

How does he watch them? I mean is it currently only on the computer screen?
Maybe also consider getting a drive which can connect to a TV using hdmi. Something like this.

What's your budget?

Kungfu_Chuck

Im a bloke and I would go for a HD media player. If you can afford it buy it! It will change how you watch TV. I have my network hooked to my 50inch but am seriously considering getting the media player below.

Go with the iomega screenplay director 1TB also available in 2TB. It will act as a network attached storage (NAS) device doubling up as a media player. It will play movies direct to your TV, output digital sound to your sound system and playback music via whatever you attach it to. There are a wide range of connection options on the back of it. This piece of kit will make you fella a very happy man if he is into that sort of stuff.

There are lots of options out there one being the WD version, however the WD version does not support 1080P, iomega does. Not that it would be too noticable. The beauty is that the player supports nearly all formats and will play back beautiful HD and play digital sounds. For DTS a dfts out cable is required.

Check Peats on Parnell st. or Komplett.ie for some good deals. around 170 - 199 yo yos.

bhickey

coylemj wrote: »

You won't get a 1TB drive in any form factor other than 3.5"

Arse! 1TB 2.5" drives have been out for over a year now and there's plenty of choice for the external USB 2.5" format on Elara, Dabs etc.

bhickey

Kungfu_Chuck wrote: »

Im a bloke and I would go for a HD media player.

Agreed. I thought I used to be clever plugging my USB key into my super-duper DVD player and watching movies that way. I borrowed a Western Digital media player and now I don't know how I ever managed without it.

Antomus Prime

The Multimedia Hard Drive is the way to go, you can pick up a 1TB these days for little over €100. That way he can plug it directly into the tv to watch movies. I've had one for about a year now and I'd be lost without it

rosiechecking

M.J.M.C wrote: »

Xmas isn't all about the presents (or the birth of Santa)

Ho Ho Ho