External drives?

Does anyone here use an external drive, like DVD rw or another hard drive?

Are they good, and if you use them, how do you like them?

What would you recomend for an hp zx5000?

 

I use an external 60GB 5400 RPM notebook drive. Bought the drive and a nice aluminum enclosure. But I use it for backing up our servers, not with the notebook. It connects via USB, so I suppose I could back up this machine too if I wanted to.

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I also use an External laptop drive. It's not a 60GB 5400rpm drive though, just a 10GB spare drive I had lying around. I bought a USB 2.0 2.5" external drive cage (very thin aluminum cage) and use the drive whenever I need to transfer anything from my computer(s) to a friends computer. Works great especially in XP. No drivers are required to be installed, everything is Plug'n Play. I think I can transfer about 10GB of data in about 1hr. It's also fast enough to watch videos & play music without any pauses or problems.

Another plus about using a notebook drive, is that is doesn't require a lot of power to operate, just 1 USB cable & you're done. But an external DVD drive or 3.5" External HDD requires that you carry an AC Adapter as well, therefore you won't be able to use it if you're running off of battery power & no electrical socket nearby.

I'd recommed the external USB 2.0 2.5" notebook HDD setup (4200rpm & up). You get fast, easy data backup/transfer capabilites that will fit into your shirt pocket.

-Vb-

 

Sounds good to me, thanks guys.

I still have plenty of room left on the 60GB drive that came in this zx5040us, just thinking ahead.
I have a 4 port USB hub that has a 5v 2.1amp output for an external drive, I rarely use battery powre so that isn't a problem.

One more thing, I have a few games and a lot of music files on the computer, would it be better to move them to another drive to free up more space on the internal one?
Sounds like a no brainer to me[ ]

 

I'd recommend that the games be kept on the units hard drive & the music be transfered off to the USB drive. The games will require access to the files to load and doing this may increase load times. Since music doesn't require extensive CPU or HDD resources, it can be transfered off the notebook and still perform without problems.

-Vb-

 

Thanks Vb, I will keep this in mind.
Always great info here, so glad I found this place[8D]