I have no idea when it comes to computers but I desperately need more space for my digital recordings. Dad reckons it's much cheaper to get an external HD case and install it all yourself rather than buying an entirely external/portable HDD. I would need something around 200-300 Gig and would like to buy from Umart for convenience. Don't really mind the cost.

Also, my DVD drive doesn't want to open anymore:( It still reads the disc that is in there but doesn't want to open. Nothing happens when I push the eject button and using a program to eject it doesn't work either. Ideas?

should be a small hole in the front of the drive. push a straight paperclip through the hole. it should eject.

for the hdd... why do you want external anyways? why not just grab a 200-300gb hdd & put it inside yur case? if its a laptop i recommend getting a laser (brand name) usb hdd caddy... really easy to put any 3.5' footprint hdd in it.

for the dvd drive... straight a paper clip... there is a little hole under the dvd tray... put the end of the straightened paper clip in & push... unless there is a mechanical problem with the tray it should open.

Reboot and see if the DVD drive opens. If not use the paperclip way and throw the drive into the bin after.

8-)

for the hdd... why do you want external anyways? why not just grab a 200-300gb hdd & put it inside yur case? if its a laptop i recommend getting a laser (brand name) usb hdd caddy... really easy to put any 3.5' footprint hdd in it.

I'd prefer external so that if I record somethign then want to give it to someone else to master i can just chuck them the whole drive. And it's not a laptop.

i have a funny thing where my dvd drive reads dvds but not cds. so gay

if you get a laptop usb hdd caddy you don't need external power for it. the laser usb hdd caddy (the hdd ypu put in must be ide not sata) that i got requires an external power supply. both are cheaper options than getting a permanant external hdd... but not by that much. the advantage is that it's easy to swap any ide hdd into the caddy. i got a 120gb wd caviar hdd in my laser caddy & it's been going strong despite my rough treatment of it for about a year... however previously i put a ibm deskstar 40gb drive in it & it died the very first time the caddy got a bump.

i have a funny thing where my dvd drive reads dvds but not cds. so gay

My Pioneer 108 drive did that exact thing. f*** it was annoying.

you guys probably used a warezd version of nero, or a keygen that nero recognises as illegitimate.
Corrupts the rom on the cd part of the dvd drive, seen it before, bound to see it again

Maybe something like this:
Vantec USB 2.0 2.5" Caddy. Only supports IDE but. ($40)
http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=93&&bid=2&sid=14092
Or
Vantec USB 2.0/eSATA 2.5" Caddy, supports SATA too ($58)
http://www.mwave.com.au/newAU/mwaveAU/productdetail.asp?CartID=mAU@ZD92OTUTWMIM7HGRTVP7ID1PQ5OR18NWNEWDCUIUKN5NVR&sku=16040073

Then a
100gig WD hard drive ($160 or 161 for SATA version from mwave and dont have to go anywhere)
http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=132&&bid=2&sid=18315
Not sure about power requirements though.

Personally im getting:
Vantec USB 2.0/eSATA 3.5" Caddy that supports SATA also. Not at umart though - but post is cheap enough and the savings on the caddy make up for it. for 75 delivered. And a 500gig 3.5" drive for like 315. But you can also get a 320gig for 133, making it just over 300 bucks for 320gig in storage, with faster transfer speeds :)

I'm going Vantec because from what i have read they seem to be the fastest transfer speeds etc.

you guys probably used a warezd version of nero, or a keygen that nero recognises as illegitimate.
Corrupts the rom on the cd part of the dvd drive, seen it before, bound to see it again

I've been using the same version of Nero for years. Plus this happened a long, long time after I installed Nero so I doubt that was the case. Most of the stuff I burn goes onto DVD's so it wasn't that bad but occassionally I'd burn an audio CD and that's when it sucked. Now I have a normal CD burner and a DVD burner just in case it happens again.

Checkmate Nero!

fyi rebooting seems to have fixed the DVD drive! yippee.

f*** that was a long reboot. Maybe you should lose Norton.

haha... well i totally forgot about not being able to open it till today.

Seagate seem to be more reliable then Western Digitals...

2 points to remember.
External HDDs are significantly slower then internal ones (unless they are SCSI or external Sata/ eSATA).... eSata != USB2 with an external casa with a sata inside)
So usb is great for storing, not so great for doing digital editing on directly.

Portability.
File systems ...
NTFS .. if your drive is ONLY going to be used on Windows XP boxes then NTFS is probably the best option.
FAT32 is a s*** file system, but can be read on just about everything. win98 has a 4gig limit, W2k and W2k3 have a 32Gig limit. However they all can read fat32 formated larger then that, but to do that you need something like Fat32 Formatter (but even then you can run into 135GB limits)

When was the last time you had a situation that you could assess the relaibility of seagate/wd drives with a large enough scope to make a formal assessment, obes?

The return rates for seagate/wd drives were the same when i was a systems builder/repairer, 2004-2006. Return rate was a constant 3 per 100 for both brands.

My Pioneer 108 drive did that exact thing.

same model

I have both WD and Seagate drives in my beast and am very happy with both, although the WD raptor is shwing! for speed.

:)

Mr Hardware ... http://www.storagereview.com/map/lm.cgi/survey_login

Long story short ....

WD Percentiles
Min 10 for Caviar WD2000BB
Max 93 for Caviar WD800AB
# of models over 90%
1 (out of 16 that had enough results to be statistically significant)
# of models under 50%
10 (out of 16 that had enough results to be statistically significant)

Seagate Percentiles
Min 11 for Barracuda 7200.8
Max 97 for Cheetah 15K.3
# of models over 90%
4 (out of 14 that had enough results to be statistically significant)
# of models under 50%
2 (out of 14 that had enough results to be statistically significant)

Thats from a survey of 45747 drives.

What can you take from that site ? Well if you say Western Digitals are in your opinion reliable, and this survey says they are in the bottom half of reliablity, then all makes of HDDs are relatively reliable.

But if a Seagate and WD are the same price, I'll probably go with the Seagate simply based on that survey.

BAM!