Large HDD or External DVD Drive (Watching movies)

My laptop doesn't have an internal dvd drive, so basically I'm looking for either an external hard drive, or a external dvd drive so I can watch movies. I see two options for this, so I'm asking you guys for suggestions/opinions.

Option One:
Rip my DVD collection to an external hard drive so I can play DVDs straight off the external hard drive and I'll never have to worry about carrying DVDs.

Option Two:
Simply buy an external dvd drive, and play dvds off there.

It would definitely be easier to do option two, but I have the funds currently to spend more if it's going to make for a better media experience.

Assuming I were rip 50-60 DVDs to the hard drive (~4 GB per movie)...how much 'extra space' should I leave myself in a hard drive to prevent slow ups? If I use up 200GB worth of movies, will a 320GB drive be enough to still maintain speed?

How common is a external hard drive failure? If I'm going to go with option two and take the time to rip all of those DVDs, I really don't want the drive to fail months later.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

external hdd fail more than internal ones simply because people drop them and abuse them if you treat it nice, it should last as long as your notebook HDD

I would get a Hard drive. simply put, it's smaller...
DVD drive + 50DVD's ??? that's alot of room
one USB Hard Drive that's better.

by the way each movie should be about 1GB or so not 4.
I do all my encoding in WMV and a full res/quality DVD is 1.3-1.8GB

Pluc I think a HDD will use less power than a disk drive constantly spinning.

 

The external DVD drive will be the easiest thing by far. A hybrid of both is the best idea. An external holds the main collection, the internal the favorites, then a couple classics on disc. I suggest to only rip only the main movie for the decent size, and cut the quality you get around 2.2 GB each file, and this still yields great quality on screen as well as via HDMI. Externals can fail at any time. I have read reviews of the first plug-in, to months later. I have two externals that have reviews going both ways, pretty much 50% success/failure. Depending upon the size of your internal, I would say pop a couple onto that, and get an external dvd drive, then consider an external as you find the need. My 2 cents..

 

Good to hear about the size (I was trying to round up a little bit to be safe but I'm happy to know I was way off).

Definitely a possibility about doing both. One reason why I'm leaning away from the external dvd drive is because I'm going to be constantly 'on-the-go' at college (I commute) and everything is spontaneous. When I'm at school I find myself to have a lot of random free time (at random places), and it would be so convenient to have all of my DVDs with me at all times (hard drive accomplishes this).

 

Get a 1 TB external HD. Get two and back it up once a month! Get an enclosure and you can buy bulk drives and swap them out!

for failure patterns, I like to check out Newegg (for reviews, not for prices - their new higher prices suck) - anyways, you can see that some batches have high failure rates.

AVOID MAXTOR LIKE THE PLAGUE! I use tons of drives for my work. I happen to have good luck with Western Digital. Right now Im actually using: Seagate, Hitachi, and Western Digital. My desktop is like a SERVER lolo

 

I feel compressed movies work best for general situations. Most movie DVD's are dual layer hi cap, so you are looking at 8-9GB for a 1:1. The movie file is usually 2-4 GB. I compress to 45% or so. This still allows for great quality and no issues. For me, this is high enough. I do not need perfect, but it is totally up to what you feel. Also, another suggestion is to leave them in their vob files and use vlc or nero to play. For an external, I think th 320GB 5.4k 2.5" is a killer deal right now from any of the top name drive makers. My next external purchase, unless a cosmic change occurs, will be a LaCie d2 in the 750GB or 1 TB size. After all of the research and comparisons I have done, this fits my needs best.