Can anyone recommend a good external USB hard drive?

[admin_exported]

Hi

Its for working with I Tunes to store all my music files on as the drive on my laptop is nearly full.

I was thinking about the Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB. Does anyone have experiences of these types of drive and are the read speeds ok for accessing lots of music files etc from I Tunes?

Thanks

Mrj

 

[Binman]

I dont have a MY book essential, but the cheaper Western Digital 500GB Elements. The Elements is very well made (thick alu casing). Not too sure what extra you get with the My Book.

Mine works really well, with no issues with data transfer rates for music. Ebuyer.com have a 640GB one for just over £60 at the moment.

If portablility is required I would get a portable external hard disk as they are powered from the USB port on your PC, so dont need their own power supply like the My Book, they are more expensive, so I guess it depends on how much music you have. See here: http://www.ebuyer.com/cat/Hard-Drives/subcat/External-Portable-Drives

,

 

[Messiah]

I use the Western Digital Book for storing iTunes music and have no issues at all!

 

[Anonymous]

I have to agree with Binman here, I have been using the western digital elements 500gig drive bought from ebuyer for some months now and found it to be excellent, especially at ebuyer prices.

 

[John Duncan]

I had a Mybook but swapped for bigger freecom NAS drives (thye do USB as well) from eBuyer which were better value. No problem with the Mybook per se though, just needed more storage.

 

[Anonymous]

Any external HD you can find will do an equally good job if it just for storing music. So go for the one you want. As someone mentioned, portability can be useful. I have a 250 GB WD passport which is tiny and powered by USB. It's really easy to move from PC to laptop, or take to a friends house.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks folks. I hadn't appreciated the power side of things. I think USB powered would be best as I move the laptop around the house a fair bit.

My music collection is only about 40GB, with songs ripped at 320kbps for playing through my IPOD connected to my av-receiver. I only have a 8GB Nano though which kind of limits the amount of music I can put on it.

Once I buy the new drive I was wondering if it would be possible to hold a second copy of my music ripped at a lower bitrate as well. Theory being that when I'm on the move with the IPOD I could sync a whole lot more songs to it and then also sync back to the higher bitrate when I'm in the house at the weekend for playing though my hi-fi.

My thoughts/worries about this are?

1. Could I convert the song files i have already to a lower bitrate or would I have to import them all over again?
2. How would I Tunes manage the songs? Would I create a second overarching "Music folder" with the lower bitrate songs contained in it and just change the overarching music folder I-tunes points to when changing between the two?.....or is there another better way doing of doing it just within the existing music folder I have? I'm worried about the duplicate side of things though.
3. or Is this a complete waste of time and I should just save for a bigger IPOD.

Sorry in advance if these are stupid questions. Things seem to have moved on a long way since I was playing Manic Miner on my ZX Spectrum in the 80's, while my technical skills haven't!

 

[John Duncan]

I can't remember off the top of my head whether you can convert 320 to a lower bit rate with one click - you can certainly do it with lossless - I'll investigate that in a minute. If you do create a lower bit-rate copy library though, what you could then do though is create a pair of smart playlists - one where the bit rate is 320 and another where it's the bitrate you choose for more compressed music (128 say). You can then sync the iPod from the 128 folder and listen to music on the PC from the 320 playlist. Make sense?

I'll check out the conversion routine.....

 

[Binman]

Itunes supports multiple libraries.

1 Create a new folder on your PC called 'Music 128Kbps' or whatever.

2. Holding down SHIFT and open up Itunes. You should be presented with three options

3. Choose 'Create new library' and call it Itunes 128Kbps (or whatever you want)

4. In iTunes. Edit>Preferences. Change settings to 128 or 256kbps or whatever you want. Under 'Itunes music folder location', navigate to your newley created folder (in step 1) And make sure the 'copy new music to Itunes Music folder' is checked.

5. In iTunes. File>import folder. Navigate to your 320kbps music

6. Itunes will then import your songs.

7. Highlight all the songs, right click and then select 'convert songs to..."

8. This should then convert all your music to the lower bitrate as chosen in STEP 4

9. Now you have 2 libraries. One at 320kbps and one at 128kbps. To change between the two, hold down SHIFT when opening Itunes and then select 'choose library'

10. Done!

Note: when switching between libraries Itunes forgets the import settings. So when ripping new CD's at 320kbps, just check that the import quality is correct.

 

[John Duncan]

On the face of it, this is brilliant - didn't know about the multiple libraries - but is that a bit of a faff when you import new CDs? Trying to get my head round the workflow for that.....

 

[Binman]

Its not too bad once you've set up your libraries.

You just (SHIFT) open the 320kbps library and rip the CD (making sure the import settings are correct). Then (SHIFT) open the 128kbps library, 'File>Add folder' of the cd you've just ripped. Then select the CD>right click>Convert. Or you just rip it twice.

Itunes also remembers the last library you opened so you dont have to use SHIFT open everytime.

This is why the 'copy new music to Itunes Music Folder' needs to be ticked in the Preferences, and you need to have two seperate areas to store your music.

I have two folders for music: Music/Lossless and Music/Lossy

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone for all your insight into this. I've ordered up a Western Digital 250Gb Passport USB drive and eagerly await its arrival.

All the best

Cheers