Karaoke Forums

I would like to congratulate everyone working on and for this forum. People here are always willing to help in whichever way they can.
I run a computerized karaoke system with two laptops (Dell and Acer) and two external hard disks, one of which is for back up.
I'm thinking of adding another 500 or 740 GB external disk for karaoke files and I'm wondering weather I should/could opt for a less space-absorbing 2.5 external one (laptop kind) or should/could I replace the existing (150GB internal), which I use just for the OS and music files, for a bigger one.
A guy I know said that the 2.5 drives are more reliable as they have less moving parts but I still would like some advice from you experienced people.
Any help and advice forthcoming will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
pormt

It's not hard to change the HDD in a laptop and I would consider that first. I have used both for external and prefer the 2.5. It runs quieter and cooler and believe it or not is not as sensitive as the 3.5.

If your laptop is a latest model, I would consider using an internal drive because it's Sata, much faster and you can get a 7200 rpm with 320-500 gig. External are slow because of USB or Firewire... but, it will be ok if reading audio files only

if you really need to go for external, aside from the cooler and quieter performance of the 2.5", you won't need to have another power supply because it could be powered by the USB itself unlike most (if not all) of the 3.5" enclosures. The downside is normally slower than the 3.5" (because of the lower power supply) but it should be enough for smaller files like Audio or karaoke.

Thank you for your replies which I found very helpful.
It seems that the 2.5 drive is somewhat better than the 3.5, so now I will be getting one of them and try it out.
Thanks again, guys.

Typically 2.5" drives draw less power and lighter. That plus the fact that they designed the 2.5" to be used in notebooks, they tend to be a bit more rugged than 3.5" drives.

However, depends on how much music you have, you may want to consider the USB FLASH drives. They much more rugged, draws much less power, as fast as any rotating disc drives,. They tend to be less capacity and more expensive but I am using them and advantages out weigh the disadvantages. You can now get a 64GB external FLASH USB drives for about $100 - $150 range.

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