USB Hard Drive
Since I start ripping all my DVD's for use on my wife's Video iPod I've been wanting to store all that data on a separate drive.
Well, having spoken to fellow Telligenti (and self-confessed audiogeek) Jim Martin today I took the plunge and bought a really cool (and cheap) USB 2.0 hard drive - a Seagate 160gb drive with a $70 rebate from Circuit City.
I also bought a 7-port USB 2.0 hub since I have about a dozen occasional devices.
I just started moving my music (media player and itunes), videos (home and dvds) and pictures to the hard drive so it can be working while go and look at houses to buy today. It's going to take a few hours!
Along the way I found a few tips and tricks:
- Only use a hard drive on USB 2.0 - 1.1 is too slow. To find out if your computer has 2.0, open Device Manager (My Computer > Properties > Hardware) and open the USB item at the very bottom of the list. Look for 2.0, USB2 or the word Enhanced in the devices listed there.
- If you right-drag a special folder like My Music to your new hard drive and then choose Move Here it will move the files and also remap the special folder to the new location.
- If you copy the files instead of move you can still remap your special folders with TweakUI - which everyone should have just for fun if nothing else.