[GEtMeSuMRiCE]

So, to my joy and after months of saying goodbye to all my downloaded kmovies and kdramas on my laptop, my super amazing aunt bought me an external hard drive for an early birthday present.

I always though external hard drives are great for additional storage space, but I've been hearing all these terrible stories of their external hard drives failing and dying on them! I'm such a techno-dud, and if it weren't for the fact that the device in question will be holding my precious files, I wouldn't bother asking you guys, but...


How do YOU guys use your external hard-drives? Is it safe to use it for additional space?


I really need to delete alot of these files in my laptop, and I was actually hoping to sweep most of my files out into the external hard-drive, but now, I'm scared to do so!!



(I don't know if a topic like this has been created, but since the search engine on soompi is broken, and since I didn't find a thread like it when searching through soompi with Google, here it is. So Mods, delete this if you must.)

[Tahimik]

How do YOU guys use your external hard-drives? Is it safe to use it for additional space?

I use my external hard drive for anything media related and schoolwork. I have like 10-12 GB of music and 40ish GB of movies

And of course it's safe to use, just make sure you eject it before you take it out. x_x I have a Western Digital 320 GB, and it hasn't failed me yet.

[Pogichinoy]

I use mine to store TV shows and I share it amongst friends.

Space is never enough!

[GEtMeSuMRiCE]

I use my external hard drive for anything media related and schoolwork. I have like 10-12 GB of music and 40ish GB of movies

And of course it's safe to use, just make sure you eject it before you take it out. x_x I have a Western Digital 320 GB, and it hasn't failed me yet.

Ah, thanks for that tip! I'm the kindof person that just takes off flashdrives without ejecting it. You got Western Digital, too? That's what I got. It had a good price for the storage it offered compared to the other brands. $110 for 500GB at the store. Most of the prettier ones were only 320GB for the same price.

I use mine to store TV shows and I share it amongst friends.

Space is never enough!

Ah, yes! I concur! After seeing all those 1TB hard drives, I can definitely see how much space is needed with all the media needs we have! I don't need much space myself, but I was definitely pulled in to at least a 500GB one!

[Gofishus]

BIttorent + External hard drive = <33

[Jyezrah]

I've had similar questions. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron, but since it was bought as a birthday present, I wasn't there to point out that 45GB for an entire computer probably wasn't going to be enough. Haha. I love my computer, don't get me wrong, but I'm always afraid to download anything, or do any big movie projects, becasue I have less than 5GB left.
Could you just leave an external hard drive permanently hooked into your computer to simply expand its memory? Or can't you get a bigger hard drive put in it? Which is cheaper? Safer? Better?

[Nuguya?]

Could you just leave an external hard drive permanently hooked into your computer to simply expand its memory? Or can't you get a bigger hard drive put in it? Which is cheaper? Safer? Better?

My external is practically a part of my computer now because I haven't unplugged it forever lol... although I do need a new one... my 500GB is running out space thanks to Korean shows/movies lol..

[Xarthan]

I use my external drive for backup.

I use it to backup say once a month, then store it offsite like at my parents house.

I have a 500GB HD on my laptop

[Ahoyhoi]

I play WoW off my external and store my anime and music. I dunno what I would do without one now. x_X

[hellotiffy]

i save all large files on my external drive, mostly media files and photoshopped graphics. i've heard a lot of horror stories about failing drives too, but you just got to take good care of it and also run the antivirus once in a while. i eject it before removing and i do not keep it plugged in. that's just me though.

[hiranojun]

I need an External HDD to transfer my Korean music files but I don't know the price and the space I would need :0

[Naruelle]

I had drives failing on me before so I'm pretty cautious when I start hearing the warning signals from the drive...

but anyhow, i have 3 externals that I had for several years (120 gb + 160 gb + 200 gb). I usually use one at a time for downloading, etc then I rotate. I also have smaller one (80gb) that I carry around sometimes for class. It's really tiny too! but then I have my 8 gig flash drive so I usually use that instead.

Right now though I have 500 gb on my computer's hard drive so I haven't used any of the externals lately.

[emma_fifth]

i usually put videos, software installers, and personal photos in my hard disk.
but sometimes it drives me crazy because i'm confused where i put my data

[magicalspeaker]

I use it for additional space :D
It's also useful when I go to friends' house and I wanna steal some of the stuff in their HD haha... all I have to do is plug it in and drag and drop :D

[dot1q]

One of the biggest failure points for external HDs is improper insertion and removal of the drive. Having said that, make sure you get one that automatically powers on and off with the host. If you have one with a manual power switch, you have to make sure to properly remove the drive from your operating system before turning it off (I don't mean physically remove the cable) and/or shutting down your computer. Some models with manual switches tend to do this more gracefully than others but why gamble. The point is whenever an external HD disconnects with it's host, make sure you do it properly and not just yank out the cable. This is why you see a lot more "data loss" issues with external drives vs internal drives. Its not that they are more or less reliable, its that people often misuse them.

I personally use my externals primarily for backup. Not because I have any doubts on its' reliability as primary storage but because I have plenty of internal space available and for performance reasons. However, I would say using it for primary storage is just as safe. External or Internal, there is ALWAYS the risk of failure and/or data loss which is out of your control. If the data is important to you, keep TWO copies. Just because you have it on an internal drive now doesn't mean you're any safer in terms of potential loss. ALWAYS BACKUP~! Granted it always means that you have to spend double for the same amount of data, but its a gain of peace of mind that's well worth it.

[thatguy]

yea i was wondering the same. i need to buy a external hard drive to shift all my mp3's from my computer. it's taking up a bug chunk of my space. how safe is it to use the internal drives hooked to a dock? the one with no casing.

[springyangel]

I hook up my external hard drive to my DVD player and watch all my anime/drama/tv shows/movies in front of the TV instead of a computer The best part is that it plays .srt files too ^__^ But it's only limited to DivX files :\

[AzizOnDeck]

I used to have my external hard drive the destination for all my downloaded torrent and yes like everyone said it's to use as long as you eject it properly

[wing-kun]

I use my external hard drive for storing movies, dramas, and animes it's nice i dont need to keep deleting my animes now. Mine's a 500GB Western Digital.

[HT2791]

definitely for back up and storage extension
160 gigs is not enough and i have a 100 gig external hard drive, but because i use that for backup, i have copies of files on both the laptop and external, which really leaves no more room for extra space actually. I've had the same Maxtor (i think) external for at least a year and a half. I actually didn't really use it so i just power it off until i need it.

Black friday will be full of great deals for externals, i'm sure of it. I did see some wal mart ads for a 500 gig external for around 80 or less than a 100 dollars.