hard drive question???

Boon · 26-12-2005, 17:39

hi
i want to buy an external hard drive, i have seen a 2 1/2 inch 30gb delivered for £49, or a 3 1/2 inch 60gb for £57.
What i want to know is, what is the difference between the 31/2 inch and the 21/2 inch one (apart from 1 inch

), does it mean you need different disc's or something

stevannie

Steep · 26-12-2005, 17:42

No m8, it's just the physical size. Smaller drives are generally used more in laptops etc that's all.

CT · 26-12-2005, 17:47

There's a good selection here.

http://www.usbtech.co.uk/catalog/default.php/cPath/18

I'm sure PC World were offering a 160 gig Samsung external drive for around 85 quid. I find myself quite liking these, and they're USB, but does anyone know if they need an external power point too? If they do I'd opt for the simplicity of the internal IDE drive - I struggle for sockets as it is with all the kit in the den.

GfK · 26-12-2005, 17:49

I'd go for an internal one (actually I already have a 40gb C: drive and 80gb D: drive for backups). As CT said, there's enough stuff dangling off my PC as it is.

Is there any particular reason why you wanted an external one?

Boon · 26-12-2005, 17:58

hi guys
not checked the links yet, but i wanted an external one because i have a laptop and dont fancy fiddling about inside it.
i tried using PS CS2 today, along with another program open, and i got a warning of a shortage of memory, so i would love to transfer all my photos to another drive, instead of filling loads of discs, and then not being able to find just what i need.
right, going to check the link for drives.
stevannie

Madpup · 26-12-2005, 18:06

iv got a 300gig Maxtor external and its brill
just make sure you get the usb2 verson, the other
is as slow as a slow thing on a go slow (you get the idea)

GfK · 26-12-2005, 18:07

Ever thought of an external DVD writer? I think these things are more suitable for archiving purposes....

Boon · 26-12-2005, 18:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by GfK

Ever thought of an external DVD writer? I think these things are more suitable for archiving purposes....

Would you say this would be better than an external hard drive, and if so, what would be your reason??
stevannie

GfK · 26-12-2005, 18:19

Well a single DVD is good for about 5Gb of storage.

Suppose you've got, oh I dunno, 50Gb of data to archive - call that 10 DVDs.

If you archive the same data to a single external hard drive and it ever packs up, you lose the lot. If you ever happen upon a dodgy DVD, the worse you'd lose is 1/10th of your archive.

I back up important stuff daily to a second hard drive, then periodically to CD or DVD. Touchwood, I've never lost anything yet.

evilowl · 26-12-2005, 18:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevannie

hi guys
not checked the links yet, but i wanted an external one because i have a laptop and dont fancy fiddling about inside it.
i tried using PS CS2 today, along with another program open, and i got a warning of a shortage of memory, so i would love to transfer all my photos to another drive, instead of filling loads of discs, and then not being able to find just what i need.
right, going to check the link for drives.
stevannie

shortage of memory means you need more RAM, not hard drive space!

Back to external drives - stick to Lacie and avoid all others unless you have a good backup of the data. Have seen far too many failures over the last 8 years I've spent in corporate IT support.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CT

does anyone know if they need an external power point too?

external drives require external power

Boon · 26-12-2005, 18:57

evilowl wrote:
"shortage of memory means you need more RAM, not hard drive space!"

i have 768 mb of ram, is this not enough for CS2. I have started to put some of them onto cd's for now, just to see if it helps.
I think going down the DVD road maybe worth looking into, then there is this thing about - and +, or both??
many thanks
stevannie

Steep · 26-12-2005, 19:06

I assume you're running XP, it has some funny ways of dealing with memory like prefering to use the swap file instead of main memoory. If you have too small or even too big a swap file you can get out of memory errors. I'm not certain but CS may also have it's own swap file space.

On my pc I have 1.5gb of main memory, I turned off the XP swap file altogether and it made a huge difference to the speed it runs at.

stevannie if archiving is what you want by all means go for a DVD recorder. My choice would be an LG drive (I have two of them now) This one is only £24 and will write to any kind of disk you can think of.
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=96691 Ooops it's internal, but you can buy external dvd writers too.

evilowl · 26-12-2005, 19:08

768 Mb should be enough, but it depends on:

a) how many images you had open and the size of the images you were processing

b) the memory usage of the other application you were using at the time

To check this next time you have both apps open - open task manager (ctrl+alt+del) and check memory usage under "processes" (hint: it helps to select more columns by clicking View>Select Columns and ticking the boxes marked Peak Memory Usage and Virtual Memory Size).

Under the performance tab - look at the Peak reading under "Commit Charge" - if this is higher than the amount of physical RAM (ie 768 Mb) in your machine then it's time to upgrade your RAM or not do so much multi-tasking.

As for DVD writers, most available these days do both + and - these days. I find + more reliable (less drinks mats produced) and good for compatibility with my Sony DVD player. Look for the faster drives (16x write speed for +/- is good)

Steep · 26-12-2005, 19:09

Actually buy that one and a caddy to make it an external drive.
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=74824

evilowl · 26-12-2005, 19:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steep

On my pc I have 1.5gb of main memory, I turned off the XP swap file altogether and it made a huge difference to the speed it runs at.

Even if you disable the swap file, Windows will still use it! and theres nothing you can do about it

***Dave*** · 26-12-2005, 19:20

Keep away from laptop H/D's if possible, as they are more unreliable in my experience (had 4 go to date in my job)

Boon · 26-12-2005, 20:05

crikey me, dont know about the dvd now, buying the drive, then the caddy, fixing em together, cable it up to the laptop, sounds like a recipe for trouble if you ask me.
Does the drive just slot into the caddy, or is there some fiddling to be done??

stevannie