Verbatim portable hard drive

LeeLee
edited July 2011 in Digital
Whilst I was in the local Asda today i noticed they were doing portable hard drives made by Verbatim for £50, these were 500 gig and run from the USB on the mac thus requiring no external power. I was wondering if these would be any good to use for my itunes library as Im down to 2.9 gig on the mac at the moment and am looking for alternatives.

If I was to buy one is it a matter of copying the itunes library over to the portable HD and directing the library to that for playback / ripping?

Any help much appreciated

Cheers

Lee

Here is a link to the device that they had in the store

Comments

  • uglymusicuglymusic
    There are better value non-portable drives around on Amazon - 1TB WesternDigital for around £40/£45, for example. Why not buy two, so you can make a back-up using something like Chronosync?

    It's easy to run your iTunes music from an external drive. I've done it from a USB in the past, and a NAS now. There's lots of help on the Apple site, or I can dig up some references if you like.
  • AlanAlan
    I have the Western drive Dave mentions and it is very good. I particularly like that I can swap it between both Windows machines and MACs and they both read it OK.

    My one is not powered from the USB hub though, it has a mains adapter.

    I now use a NAS drive for my music (even though it is not on my network) as I wanted to have an ethernet connection rather than use USB.
  • LeeLee

    I was more interested in a drive which is powered by USB which is what attracted me to the one in the Asda. I will have a ponder about one over the next day or so.

    Whats the concensus about the files on the exisitng HD, should I duplicate them onto the portable HD or move them entirely?

     

    Cheers

     

    Lee 

  • uglymusicuglymusic

    I was more interested in a drive which is powered by USB which is what attracted me to the one in the Asda. I will have a ponder about one over the next day or so.

    Whats the concensus about the files on the exisitng HD, should I duplicate them onto the portable HD or move them entirely?

     

    Cheers

     

    Lee 

    I can see the convenience, but it's at quite a financial cost, and you may find that that type of drive will only work when plugged directly in to your Mac mini. 

    Even some separately powered drives can be fussy about being plugged into hubs, but none of my current drives complain - I have two WD MyBook drives, one of which must be four or more years old, an IcyBox USB JBOD enclosure with whatever spare drives I have in it, plus a CD ROM and a DVD ROM drive and one of those docking things that allows you to plug in a bare drive and format it or whatever. They're all happily working plugged into a Belkin hub.

    Sorry if that was a pointless diversion!

    I am a backup fiend and have a copy of everything on RAID drives and on an external drive that's being kept elsewhere, so duplicate files - always!
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    But to answer your question more directly. I don't know the drive, but it will do the job you want it to.

  • LeeLee
    In the end guys I went for the Verbatim from Asda, even better is that they had reduced it to £47!

    well chuffed with the result, plenty of space on the drive now for more music
  • DocfosterDocfoster
    Help me out here fellas...
    What are the differences between an SSD and a HD...?
    What are the pros and cons? - I assume cost is a pro for the HD - the 240GB SSD I recently fitted into my TFS sat on the current £1/GB SSD sweetspot rate. Clearly these portable HD offer vastly better value. So what are the pros of the SSD i bought (other than it's neatly hidden from view)?
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    Very briefly...

    SSDs are memory chips. HDs have magnetic discs, movable heads and motors.

    HDs make much more noise than SSDs, which is why you have an SSD.

    HTH
  • DocfosterDocfoster
    Righto...
    Thanks dave.
  • DocfosterDocfoster
    Presumably I could use a portable hd to back up...?
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    Yup! And for storing your live files, if you wish.
  • DocfosterDocfoster
    Live files...?
  • DocfosterDocfoster
    Remember Dave, I work outside of computers... :-D
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    Live files are the ones you play (or are working on, in a usual computing environment), as opposed to back-ups or archives.

    So if you have two external HDs, one contains your playback files (live files) and the other, your backups.

    HTH
  • DocfosterDocfoster
    Reserved a 500gb usb powered portable one for £37 (Internet price) at my local currys.digital no less.
    Will use it to back up my ripped CDs (I don't want to have to do that again), and some important work stuff that'll allow me to sleep easier in my bed.
    One final thought, can an hdd be used to record live tv from a dtv's pvr USB port...?
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