How Delicate Is An External Hardrive

[toddiscool]

Upcoming a longer than necessary lead-in from toddiscool.

Ok so my girlfreind is taking some joke comuters stuff for her advertising course. They recomment her to get a zip disk, they are not aloud to save stuff on the computers there. first year it is general stuff, word, powerpoint what not. Nothing a floppy could no thandle but semester it gets alittle more high end, and she was told that a 256 flash would not be enough. I ask what do they want you to have, she ofcourse does not know, or what apps they are going to be using. She knows some of it will be on a mac.


So i check out the price of zip drives, more than I thought - have not checked used but new they wer like 150-200 (canadian) kike me to flash drives (or usb keys if you prefer) 256mb around 200$ (i could only find one online, in canada)
acceptable, but not to need multiple.

So i start thinking uncoventional - external burner. (FC mentioning one for 60$, i think he is in canada?) Lowest I found was about 100$ issue becomes burning software, not gonna be installed on school PC's.

So I think external HD, 80gig 200$. Now it is reasonable to think that she can carry this to and from school w/o wreking it? She is not an idiot and can appreciate something is breakable, but I know internals are very delicate.

- teaching her about compression is an impossibility as she i thick about that, and aslo I would not be able to get winrar installed on the pc she is using at work her proff is an asshole anit-pirater.

God that is longer than intended, anyways so can an external HD be called portable?

[ilw]

u should look around more for usb memory sticks theres tons of cheap ones around of varying sizes ($40 US for 128MB) and that would probably be a better solution than an external hard drive.

[toddiscool]

Originally posted by ilw@9 September 2003 - 15:35
u should look around more for usb memory sticks theres tons of cheap ones around of varying sizes ($40 US for 128MB) and that would probably be a better solution than an external hard drive.

The problem somes in her second term though, they are to do some video editing. no flash drive is gonna be able to hold any amount of video. so it would be a waste of money to use it just for 4 months.

Do they make mini disks that can hold data yet?

[lynx]

What about cd-rw ?

I suppose it all depends on what is available at the school, but if they have good drives, and software supporting the correct format (I can't remember the name of the format, but it is the one supported by Nero IN-CD) you can get about 600MB on a disk.

Alternatively, use cd-rw to keep the initial copy of the work she is taking to school, and use a memory stick to bring back the stuff she has changed that day. When she get's home the base copy can be updated from the memory stick and a new cd-rw created.

Unlikely that she is going to be changing more than 256MB on any single day, and I know from other posts that you already have fast cd-rw capability.

Edit: our postings crossed, so maybe 256MB won't be enough, but the cd-rw option stll holds.

[toddiscool]

Well i know that the drives at school do not have burners. But you are very right indeed, to keep a cd-rw for her to update at home and keep the flash drive empty and only put the stuff back on at school.

That is why I fuckin love this forum.
I kinda wanted another HD though. haha

[3rd gen noob]

possibly stupid suggestion coming up...

what about an mp3 player (usb2.0 or firewire) with a large hdd (20 gig or so). you can get them pretty cheap...

[FuNkY CaPrIcOrN]

I got my 80 GB Western Digital for $99(after $50 Rebate).I took it to a friends only one time....so I really do not know if they can be carried around alot.I have heard different stories on this.

[toddiscool]

Originally posted by 3rd gen noob@9 September 2003 - 15:57
possibly stupid suggestion coming up...

what about an mp3 player (usb2.0 or firewire) with a large hdd (20 gig or so). you can get them pretty cheap...

Another valid idea. shall be lookd int, she would have it full of music and not the stuff she needs, but that is a woman. thanks guys and girls? not sure about a couple of ya.

[lynx]

Surely the whole point about them being external drives is that they are portable. Someone was asking a similar question a few weeks ago, as far as I remember the cheapest way to do it was to buy a fairly small capacity drive (which you can pick up reasonably cheaply), then if you need to increase the capacity you can open it up, remove the existing drive and fit a larger one, internally they have a standard IDE hdd.

For added safety she could put the drive in a Jiffy bag when transporting it, but I suspect the biggest danger time is when she is taking it in and out of her bag - that is when it is most likely to get dropped.

[toddiscool]

Originally posted by lynx@9 September 2003 - 16:06
then if you need to increase the capacity you can open it up, remove the existing drive and fit a larger one, internally they have a standard IDE hdd.

Really? i did not know that, I do not know why I thought they would be so diffrent but never immagine it would be as easy as swapping. Wow.