Optical Device VS Ext. Hard Drive

Raveboy

Baseband Member
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I was wondering what would be the best way to listen to my music and films.

I know that both optical disks like cds and DVDs have a life cycle and are prone to getting scratched. All though at Dirt cheap prices these days a replacement will not break the bank. They also can take up loads of space - like my ever increasing music and video library.

Also the devices to play them like optical drives have a shelf life too, Ihave been quoted 1000hrs of play back for some.

With External hard drives you can get 250 gigabytes for a very good price these days and can hold 1000s of albums, videos and pictures. They are also quiete portable so you can move them around from place to place. However, I don't know the lifecycle of hard drives, does any one know?

One of the problems with Ext. hard drives is if you get a virus and it wipes ou the whole library.

Which would be the safest and most compact way to hold all my music? And most financailly insignificant?

Also what other things could I take into considerartion? Basically what are ALL the pros and cons of each method?
 
Well I personally would go for the external harddrive...mainly because i don't have to go searching for a disc when I want to find something, and it's all in one spot....It will be more reliable, because discs can just go bung at any random time and yes the lifecycle on them is probably a fair bit longer than discs..So +1 to the HDD for me

Matt
 
well you answered the cons part of the DVD/CD collection already.

I have yet to see a virus attack an external hard drive unless a file that is being copied onto it is infected.

the only con i can think of with an external would be speed. particularly if its going to be usb based. That, and if you are not gental with it, all the knocking around will do damage to the drive.
 
another pro of the external hdd is if you move house then you dont have to pack up 100's of dvd's to be moved you just have to pack you removeable hdd

and if you go on holiday and you have a laptop ,you could take your whole dvd collection and watch it on the plane/train /car wherever when you are travelling
 
celegorm said:
the only con i can think of with an external would be speed. particularly if its going to be usb based. That, and if you are not gental with it, all the knocking around will do damage to the drive.

I have played music from internal hard drives before, I can't recollect any issue of speed. Especially when I play the tracks, after all the all play at the same speed.

What sort of knocks to the drive are we talking here?

I can see you your point that if you throw a cd without a jewel case down a flight of twenty stairs it it would survive but throwing a a hard drive might render it obsolete and a piece of scrap metal.

I can see one plus side of taking a DVD music album on holiday though - you could transfer well over twenty albums onto a single dvd and take that on holiday whuch would be a damn sight lighter than a brick sized hard drive.

Although holiday talk is only a minor part of my life and I was more thinking everyday use.
 
^^ do you mean external there??? but really the only time you would notice the speed difference is when you are transfering songs to or from the external.
 
Raveboy said:
I have played music from internal hard drives before, I can't recollect any issue of speed. Especially when I play the tracks, after all the all play at the same speed.

the bolded part makes no sense, you mentioned external hdds, he gave you a con associated with their use and you throw back a comment about internal hdds...?

you do realize that there is a difference...right...?
 
if your worried about using an external hd you could always use a keydrive, they go up to 5gig now so if the files are compressed that could be an option, i would still use a external hd thow, as for virus threats ,you should put the files on you desktop/laptop first then scan them before transfering them across to a external hd thus eliminating the threat( if any ) before storage
 
I have to say, I can't see a real "pro" to using CDs. yes, of course they are cheap but take up so much more space and are so easily scratchable as to render the "pro" useless.
 
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