Karaoke Forums

I know this question is geared more towards COMPUTERS than Karaoke but we seem to have some pretty savy computer geeks here ( no offense meant).

Need to buy an external Hardrive for my backup show laptop. In the past I've purhased something like a WD BOOK that has it's own AC plug and is bulky.

Now I've seen these 500gb portable drives that look like wallets very thin with no AC and run right off the laptop usb drives power .

Can these be anygood for SHOW USE week after week ????
The specs SEEM to show the same data speed etc.

Any opinions would be appreciated....

There is no reason to fear the USB powered hard drives. I use one and it works great. The only problem I've ever seen with them is if you're using a USB hub to connect it (rather than connecting directly to the computer). Some USB hubs don't deal well with supporting powered accessories like that, some even have an aux power input to help with that. So if you're going through a USB hub, I'd say you probably want to test it before going live. If it's going to be plugged directly into the computer's USB port, you should have no problems at all.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Tony, thanks

A DJ friend of mines also uses one and said they are great... I was just a little leary of using it as it seems so small and fragile .

I think I saw a 500gig at a local Best Buy store for about $100..seemed like a bargain.

In addition, disable all un-needed services, (Screen saver, etc.)

Anything that causes the screen to blank, turns off the USB drive..

I use external drives with an on/off switch..

THANKS ..good to know that !

I really like my Iomega Prestige 320gb portable USB drive. Like you I was skeptical, especially of it running off the computer, but so far so good. I've used it as my main drive for 1-1/2 months. Significantly smaller and lighter than my Maxtor external drives which have been relegated to backup duty.

That's not exactly accurate. Because windows sees it as a hard drive, it gets treated just like the rest of the hard drives as far as power management. The drive will not go to sleep if it is in use, even if the display turns off.

That said, I would recommend for any karaoke laptop, that you go into the power management settings (through control panel) and setup a power scheme that disables all power saving features. No sleep mode, no turning off hard drives, no turning off the display.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

When buying this type of external hardrive -- I see some specs that read
8mb cache or 16mb cache and other that don't list any cache.

How important is this feature and should you always want MORE ?

More is better..

And yes, some systems will turn off USB powered hard drives.. and some don't.

I suspect it has to do with the power saving settings..

I always use the same USB port too.. (Keeps the same drive letter)

Any DAW should be totally stripped of any background sevice or power saving feature.

The OS should be on a sepatate hard drive or partition. I set the virtual memory for as much as ram on the large partition. I havnt used an extrenal HDD for awhile but I would use a 2 1/2" or laptop drive if necessary. It is more rugged runs cooler and doesnt take as much power.

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The portable drives are just as tough, and a lot smaller, but you actually pay more for them than you would for the 'bulkier' drives.

Reseller Ratings is a great place to look for computer gear, specifically laptops and hard drives, if you're going for price (for brand new items), you should check out resellerratings.com, it's great, it will give you a reference to check against the store prices in your area.

But, to answer your question, pick one by a company that isn't fragile, and look up hardware tests. Slashdot is great for all things geek.

A little off topic but not really..... My external hard drive just went!!!!! I have a seagate 500gb that literally just stopped working a few days ago and I was temporarily losing my freakin' mind. I had been having problems with compuhost shutting down during performances and thought it was my laptop but it wasn't.

Please heed my warning....... Back-up your external harddrive!!!!!! Thank god my wife backed up ours about 10 months ago. Turns out after calling compuhost and seagate that our hard drive failed possibly because of the way we were handling it. While we always tried to be careful with it we never stood it upright on the stand that it came with. We usually just stuck it in the rack and forgot about it. That apparently is a no-no. By not standing the hard drive up it caused "bad sectors" and stopped working. BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!!!