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Question for PB/ibook owners

puckhead193

puckhead193

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 25, 2004
9,588
878
NY
I need to buy an external hard drive for my PB. The question is what should i put on it. I like having everything with me at all times. So when i travel its all their. I was thinking of getting the Lacie triple interface, 250 gig hard drive but what should i put on their... my music, my photos, movies?
how do you handle your files with your external hard drive and traveling with your laptop? i mean i guess i could use my ipod to put files on.
 
it depends on how much stuff you have. i keep all my 5gigs of music on my internal hd, but my roommate had 40 gigs of mp3's so he kept it on his external. same thing goes with photos. i've got a 120 gig external that i mainly use for storing movies and a backup of my pbook harddrive (in case of a freak accident)
 
Honestly, I hate external HDs. They are overpriced, internal drives are just as fast, and they defeat the purpose of a laptop, which can be moved around as easily as an external HD pretty much. I would instead buy a 160GB internal HD from a company like Seagate or Western Digital. Since this is a laptop there will be a hit in speed, but it will be more than made up for in convienence.
 
The point of a laptop isn't neccessarily defeated, depending on how you use the external drive. Mine, for example, hosts my music, which I don't need to have on my laptop when I'm mobile because it's on my iPod. And external drives also allow for backups.

They are, however, horribly overpriced; that's why you should never buy one. Instead, get a FireWire enclosure ($30-50), then get any size of cheap-as-heck desktop drive you like and drop it in. When you want to upgrade, you can just get another dirt-cheap 3.5" drive.
 
In this age of huge mp3 collections and movies (your own, ripped or downloaded) all laptop users are going to have this problem, not just Mac users. Even the top end PB17" only has a 100gb drive which is not enough storage space for me.

I keep all my docs, pix and iTunes library on my PB and the movies on an external 160gb (which was a good size when I bought it 18 months ago)

For a cost effective option get yourself a good IDE drive: 250gb, 7200rpm, 8mb buffer and put it in a USB2 caddy. About $120.

If you want something more portable you can get another 2.5" (laptop hard drive, 60-100gb) in a caddy that gets it's power from the USB2 slot. Around same price.

Ready made external drives are over priced unless you need to have a FireWire or Ethernet port on them.
 
I'm not sure where I saw it, but theres this External 160GB, that is small, compact, and comes in white, and matches any Mac. I'll see if i can find a link.
 
well i went out and got it, the lacie triple interface external hard drive. (250 gig) (i didn't pay for it)
I have about 16 gigs of music, 2.1 gigs of photos, and about 12 gigs in documents, movies about 4.5 gigs
 
puckhead193 said:
well i went out and got it, the lacie triple interface external hard drive. (250 gig) (i didn't pay for it)
I have about 16 gigs of music, 2.1 gigs of photos, and about 12 gigs in documents, movies about 4.5 gigs
Click to expand...

you have 12 gigs in documents?! As in word and excel docs? that is insane.
 
jessica. said:
you have 12 gigs in documents?! As in word and excel docs? that is insane.
Click to expand...
yea i have some other stuff like movies and stuff that's in their.... i don't why its in their, its stuff from my old P-CEE
 
I wrestled with this one for some time as well.

Like many others...
I have left all my pics, iTunes library and most od my day to day current files on my PB.

External HDD I have video / movie files, back up files, and archive of files I don't use on a regular basis.
 
let me say this,
I would never keep all of my itnes library On my PB.
Can you imagine 45GB woth of music on the poor thing. Believe me, it will slow the s*** out of your PB. Instead i use a small but efficient LaCie Porsche 100GB HD. It's small and efficient. I can take it with me everywhere and it always works. Wish i could say the same about my last portbale HD.
 
I keep most stuff on my Powerbook since I don't tend to use the PB at a desk and don't want to be tethered to the LaCie. My external drive has my backup clone of the Powerbook's HD and another partition with movies and other large files that I don't need to access regularly. If/when I get my camcorder, it will also be used for storing video footage while I'm working on it (with FW800 to a 7200rpm drive, I can't see it being any slower than working on my 4200 internal drive!)

I saw the ethernet LaCie being blogged about somewhere although the person was saying that they had trouble with reformatting it for use with their Mac - not sure if it's an issue or whether they were just non-techie.
 
gallivant said:
They are, however, horribly overpriced; that's why you should never buy one. Instead, get a FireWire enclosure ($30-50), then get any size of cheap-as-heck desktop drive you like and drop it in. When you want to upgrade, you can just get another dirt-cheap 3.5" drive.
Click to expand...

True, I saw this 250GB 7200RPM , internal HD for $99.00 at CompUSA.

4ba7815f-01ad-4fe7-96ed-c3925e4c158d.gif
 
I bought a great firewire enclosure for a laptop hard drive from Daystar. 35 bucks. Easy backup/storage. Agree that I hate the huge desktop drive caddies, though some of them are better designed to sit on their sides than others. Almost as big as my laptop. Just for fun, i've been thinking about the one gig usb zip drives (I they are called zip drives, they are the size of a keychain) -- anyone have any experience with them?
 
I was looking at getting an 80 GB external @ futureshop this week it's going for 99.99 but now you guys are making me hesitant.
 
california said:
I bought a great firewire enclosure for a laptop hard drive from Daystar.
Click to expand...

I'm still confused. So what's the difference between external hard drives?
 
External HD is NOT inside your comp, it plugs into your firewire 800 or 400 port or your USB, INTERNAL is exactly that INSIDE your comp.
Has anyone ever checked ebay for External HD's??? I found LaCie 500GB External for Buy it now price of $300....killer deals there
 
I want to get an external HD for my photos. I have almost 20 gigs of pics! But mostly it will just be for backup. I keep all my music and photos on my iMac since it has a big HD. My PB has the bare bones. I have a few photos of my kids and my favorite playlists.
 
MacVM said:
I'm still confused. So what's the difference between external hard drives?
Click to expand...
I just posted this over on another thread. Hopefully it answers a question or two.

MEEEEEEEEE said:
It really depends on the quality of the drive and the design of the enclosure. Seagates are solid and despite people's disdain, I have had no problems whatsoever with any of my 7 Western digital drives I have had over the last 4 years. The JB series have been solid for me.

Look for 4 things in an enclosure:
Oxford 1394 chipset (arguably the best/fastest/most reliable)
Aluminum construction for increased heat dissapation
Fan for ventilation (not a must have, but VERY good to have)
No stupid blinking lights as bright as the sun. They piss me off.

Also, use firewire when possible because it reduces the load on the rest of the system by using the chipset to handle the data transfers.
Click to expand...
 
You can get external hard drive enclosures for both desk top hard drives as well as enclosures for laptop hard drives. The enclosures for desktop hard drives are MUCH larger, obviously. I have had firewire and usb enclosures and the firewire ones are better for previously posted reasons. The desktop hard drive things are gigantic hogs when they sit on your desk but cheaper and usually more storage space -- up to 250gigs as previously posted. Funny, but if I'm going to get an external hard drive, the speed of the drive 5400 7200 or 4200 doesn't seem to matter to me, but to some people, it may make a difference.
 
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