New HD, what to do...

I need more space for my movies and music, I have the 250gb drive in here and am trying to decide what to do, hoping for some advice, here's my ideas:

WD Momentus XT 500gb (+2.5" case for my 250gb)
WD Momentus 500gb (same as above)

Some 2.5" external (500+gb)
A large 2 bay external case w/ 2x1tb+

I don't know what to do, I don't particularly care too much if the music/movies are ON my laptop so much as just having them. I do care about having space for games, etc. I am already down to about 80-90gigs remaining.

 

Things to consider:

--You can't really play games from an external. If all your space is from games, an external isn't going to help.
--Movies and music can work on an external. The benefit is with a second hard drive, you can back things up. You can move what you need onto the laptop if you're going to be gone for a few days, or if it's more, you can bring the whole external, and it really doesn't take much additional room.
--An external will cost less than half the price of a laptop hard drive. For the $110 that the Momentus XT 500gb costs, you can get a 2tb Western Digital external from Dell and still save money (slickdeals).
--If you have to get your laptop repaired, with an external, you keep your music and movies with you. Plus, you don't have to worry about tech support wiping it all out.

Really if you don't care if your music or movies are on your laptop, as long as that 250gb is big enough for your games, monetarily it makes way more sense to get an external. If your games can't fit on that 250gb, you need a new internal drive.

 

I can't imagine my games taking up a WHOLE lot more than the 250, this steam sale is eating up my HD space with a quickness though. I will probably go with the external route, now I just need to decide if I want big bulky and lots of space or small light and easily portable. I guess it would probably be in my best interest to go with big bulky and tons of space, in the future drop a better hd in the laptop and get a case for the 250 as a portable.

 

You can always put games that you don't use often in an external drive. Saves you the hassle of having to download the games again...

 

How easy is it to transfer them over when I want to play them?

 

steam makes it freaking easy - either copy folders or you can make official backups. I have an external of 200GB of my steam games backed up. Just so I don't have to re-download them. Not sure what you use though..

 

I was actually thinking about this myself. I also got the standard 250GB harddrive and I am down to about 100GB free. Do you guys have any personal suggestions for a particular external HDD/is there a thread somewhere on this forum with said suggestions?

I was looking at these two:
WD Elements

WD Elements Portable

They are both 1TB and the main difference is that the first one is larger and has its own power brick while the second one is smaller and only runs on USB power. The second one unfortunately costs 50 bucks more for its portability factor though. Do any of these look good?

 

I personally prefer usb powered only drives for the portability. I also suggest just getting an external portable case and buy the hard drive seperate. So much cheaper. Want to save more money, I just use 5400RPM for my ext storage drives.

I have this: Amazon.com: Eagle Tech ET-CS2PESU2-BK 2.5-Inch SATA to USB/eSATA Portable HDD Enclosure w/Built-in USB cable:…

absolutely love it, the cable is built in and hidden when needed for portability. Just buy a cheap 5400 2.5" laptop HDD and you'll be golden. two screws, pop in the HDD and close, tighten screws, format HDD and you'll be golden! I recommend Western Digital or Seagate for HDD.

 

Ah, thanks for the tip! I'll keep it in mind for the future. I am currently using my old desktop/old 80GB iPod as my backup drives of sorts haha. It's a big hassle but I think I'll keep at it until one of them dies. Still trying to sort out which accessories to buy for my laptop. So many things to buy but so little money.

 

Yeah I hear that, I am thinking I should go with a big storage device for now, I really like the built-in USB cable as well as the USB power, awesome. Should I go with a double bay external case or a single bay pre built external drive? This is a dumb question, but is usb 3.0 backwards compatible at the lower speeds?

 

usb 3.0 is compatible with usb 2.0