That's exactly what I want. Just extra storage for my music. Hmm. Now the tough decision. Buy it before or after the tranny. Decisions decisions.

 

Tiger direct has a western digital 250gig usb/firewire external drive for $149.99
The item number is W10-5024
Sounds like a deal to me.

 

I just installed a network external drive (500GB Western Digital). It plugs into my router and gives my 3 PC's full access to it (including the wireless laptop). If I need more storage, I can daisy-chain as many as I want. Every PC thinks the network drive is an internal drive and it works really fast. Since it is not slaved off a PC, I don't have to worry about keeping a PC turned on to access it from another PC. The nice thing is that as I replace PC's, I don't have to worry about getting a large hard drive or about transferring data from an old PC to a new PC. This network drive also supports network printers which makes it easy to justify a really good laser printer accessibile by all the PC's. Total cost incl. tax & shipping was about $285.

 

Wow that's a sweet setup. I'll have to consider something like that. Part of my network is wired and part of it wireless shouldn't matter though.

 

What Pop-Pop bought was a NAS device. (Network Attached Storage) great if you have a small network at home or if you use a router to protect you computer from internet hackers. A little more money than the External Hard Drives that attach via USB, but a great option.

 

So I know the overwhelming response is for internal storage, but I've only got a laptop (company issue). Looking for external storage for personal files (as well as music and videos).

The laptop has USB 2.0 ports, so that's one option I'm looking for. Any other options I should definitely include (or ones to avoid)?

Edit: One more question, on a shared storage device (such as this one Maxtor Shared Storage 300GB Hard Drive), can you also connect to it via USB when not plugged into the network? What I'm looking for is the ability to have it plugged into my home network when I'm at home, but be able to carry it with me when I travel and access the data on my laptop.

 

That maxtor drive you posted has two USB ports as well as an ethernet port... Shoulod work just the way you describe!! I've had good luck with maxtor myself... Make sure whatever you get it is either USB 2.0 or FireWire

 

The disadvantage to the network storage would be the transfer rate of 10/100 Mbps Ethernet speed, if you were connecting wireless 802.11g it will be 54Mbps versus USB-2 @480Mbps.
Not sure if they are capable of 1000Mbps yet.

But if speed is not an issue the package looks nice.
Most of mine I built with an external case and 500Gb Seagate drives.
I prefer saving more data on several smaller drives than to one single large drive.
It hurts a little more to loose 700Gb of data than it does to loose 200Gb.
I have had drives forget who they were several times.
Jim

 

Spun, that is exactly what he needs. If he doesn't have UCB 2.0, he can use the Firewire. Also, BLUE, make sure it has a 16mb buffer, or they WILL be classics by the time you get them transferred. External is easier to take from one pc to another. Did I say that???!!!


Hay

 

Most hard drives don't even have the ability to do more than 100mbs transfers, let alone fill the 480 mbs of usb 2.0. Internal hard drives are limited to 150 mbs for sata drives and 133 mbs for ata 133. My router is capable of 10/100/1000 and my cat 6 cables are also rated that high. I do alot of streaming through my network to my modded xbox, and my 360. My entire dvd collection is stored on my server and I stream the movies to my hd tv and never had a problem with external drives. Pricewatch.com has the cheapest prices, well, it actually finds the cheapest prices on the internet.