Anyone use a external hard drive for storing movies??

[djstretch]

my laptop only has a 40gb hard drive and i'm looking for something to put movies and mp3's on

my qeuestion is if i put a movie on an external USB 2.0 hard drive will the connection using the USB 2.0 be fast enough to later burn the movie to a dvd+r

does anyone here use a usb 2.0 hard drive for storing movies?

anyone have any suggestions on what brand to get?

i recently saw a Western Digital My Book 160gb for $129 with a $80 rebate

thanks

[Gary D]

I use my external HD for storing some of my kid's movies. I always copy it to my internal HD for burning. The connection speed between an external VS internal drive is limited to the USBs capabilities. DMA is the best method of data transfer to burn a DVD.

To read more on DMA, see this FAQ called: What's all this about DMA?

[youthinksoo]

I store up to 500 gb of movies all the time on my 3 external hds

[volfann]

I burn from internal HD but save the files on external. Saves alot of defragging on C_ drive.

[afulle03]

I do not know if this is relevent to your question, but I have an external DVD burner that runs from the 2.0 USB and I have no problems with it being slow or anything. It is actually faster than the internal DVD burner. I would just try it and see. The other replies ppl have wrote talk about saving on external and then moving to internal to burn, if I were you I would get your external hard drive and try to burn from there and just see what happens, if it suxs do what they do.

[Chewy]

my laptop only has a 40gb hard drive

some of those don't have usb2, external is dog slow in usb1 speeds

[movielover]

If it's for storage, and storage only...go right ahead.

[rsquirell]

I have a Western Digital and external Sony DVD burner serialed on the firewire. Never had any problems burning direct from the external drive...and can easily add another if I need more room. You can serial as many devices as you want off the firewire (IEEE 1394) port. Get one with rpm of 7200 no matter whether u use firewire or usb.

[Chewy]

rsquiell,
give a little more detail on that setup, coming off seperate firewire ports,
firewire drive to firewire drive, burning at what speed. Be neat to see a data disk graph with cdspeed.
except cdspeed might not see the firewire?

[rsquirell]

I bought all my external stuff when I had a VAIO notebook ( firewire included, but the usb ports were 1.1...got a pca card with 2 usb2 ports to connect a dazzle dvc150.) My 80 GB external HD spins at 7200rpm...i usually burn with my external sony dvd burner...never checked burn speed...never had a problem...carefree storage and burning so far. When my notebook fried a mother board and power board I got a Dell PC ( had to pay extra for firewire for it). I usually do burn from the external HD...to add another HD you just serial it in...everything running off 1 1394 port. They make PCA cards with 1394 ports if your notebook doesn't have one...but i think external HD's come as either/or, so you'd have to get one for strictly firewire use. You can hang as many 1394 devices off one port as logistics allows...but it's only 1 USB device per port. Everything seems to be transparent...when I go to My Computer it shows my firewire...just click on "F" drive and navigate...seems to move as fast as "C".

[Chewy]

if you used nero to measure you would find firewire is about half as fast as internal drives

[rsquirell]

Interesting...have to take your word on that...i have an older version of nero and only use it with shrink. Usually burning from TMPGenc DVD Author...CDs from RecordNow...it seems to take more time to set up for the burn than the actual burn itself (which I never thought was slow.)

[Chewy]

have to take your word on that

I test everything, usb2 sucks

e-serial rulz

[rsquirell]

since I had a Sony VAIO notebook with no DVD burner my first purhase was an external Sony DVD burner on the 1394 port. When I needed space I serialed in my WD HD...but when you look at the process, all my burning software is on "C" drive (Nero, DVD Author, MyDVD ,ULead, Pinnacle, and a number of CD burning programs.) Everything goes from F to C to prep for the burn...but then out to the burner on the firewire from C to cut a disc. With an external burner you have no option, but the burn is being directed from C. They say that USB2 is supposed to be faster than the firewire, but I don't think you can really see much difference...and there's a rigid IEEE standard for firewire (which is why you can serial devices on it.) With no USB Standard each manufacturer is free to invent his own...which may be the root cause of some performance problems for some devices with differing USB standards.

[Chewy]

very simple to test, just take a movie file(~4gigs) and transfer over usb and firewire and time, I usually get ~12MB/s with usb2 and 23MB/s with firewire.