External USB drive

mtmsol · 11-15-2001, 10:23 AM

I jsut stumbled across this external USB drive and wanted to get some input. It uses a laptop hard drive, and is powered from the USB interface (no other power source required). At only $29, it looks perfect for my needs - I would install a small hard drive for the OS in my carputer, then keep all my MP3s on this external drive. This way I can bring the drive inside and connect to my desktop PC to transfer songs. The only downside is that it's only 900Kb/sec transfe rate. I don't mind that it will take a long time to load songs to it, but my concern is with playback. Will playback be choppy or would this be fast enough? Thanks for the help!

Mike.

MikeHunt79 · 11-15-2001, 10:41 AM

If it really can do 900kb/sec (sustained) then im sure mp3 playback would be fine.... even divx should be ok!

Telek · 11-15-2001, 03:29 PM

Well USB itself is 12mbit/s if I remember correctly, so a theoretical 1.5MB/s is possible over the USB bus. 900kbyte/sec seems quite plausable, but don't forget that laptop hard drives are expensive compared to their desktop counterparts. And 900kbit/s will take a while to load, but I guess you won't need to do that all that often.

However I just got 2 802.11b USB adapters for $160USD incl shipping off of ebay (they're new too!) so as long as I park within 200M of my car (no problem) that'd be a much easier way to do it. Might be worth it, so that you can get full transfer rates off of a normal hard drive (the total cost probably wouldn't be much more than a laptop drive + the usb adapter) in case you want to use the carputer for something that will require bandwidth in the future.

brooksy69 · 11-16-2001, 03:51 AM

I've been using a USB to ide adapter for about 2 months now. It works absolutely fine for playing mp3s (system is a KII-450, with 96 MB ram), transfer rates are initially a bit slow for copying large amounts of data (I have over 10gb of mp3s), but for updating etc it is fine. I have been using an auto-playlist compiler for winamp - it adds about 15 sec to the start up time whilst it detects songs before playing. I agree about laptop hard drive being more expensive - I am using a normal drive, mounted with the usb to ide interface inside an old cd rom case - a little scruffy, but serves its purpose.

Hope this helps

steve671 · 11-23-2001, 07:36 PM

Note:
That is an enclosure, not a hard drive

.

AGoodbar · 11-23-2001, 09:43 PM

160 on ebay?!? I get them here at best buy for 65 for a PCMCIA card and 72 for a PCI card (D-Link 802.11b

)

Machs_FueL · 11-24-2001, 11:53 AM

How much current does it draw?

Telek · 11-24-2001, 03:47 PM

$160 was for 2 adapters, thus $80 each, and this was delivered to my door in Canada. Brand new they're about $120USD where I live, or over the net now for about $90 + shipping was the best that I saw it at, plus not many places are willing to ship to Canada. stupid customs policies.

and for the question about current, what device were you referring to?

Machs_FueL · 11-24-2001, 09:39 PM

a USB external drive adapter powering a laptop drive..

Dimitris1976 · 11-26-2001, 04:46 AM

I am using 802.11b wireless LAN adapters too for my file transfers.
A USB v.2.0 external drive could be a nice alternative to the Firewire for those who want a portable HDD or a DVD-ROM too far from the trunk in the dash.
And it's also compatible with the older USB peripherals.

smashr2k · 11-26-2001, 08:05 AM

remember though you are gonna have trouble running DVD off of USB. USB is fine for DIVX and MP3, but not for DVD.

Telek · 11-27-2001, 05:25 AM

if you have USB v2.0 you can do DivX off of it without a problem

480 Mb/sec (60MB/sec) is far more than enough for DVD. Actually, DVD itself could even work off of USB v1.0 because it only needs about 900KB/s to 1.2MB/sec, which is doable over USB v1.0.

However there aren't very many USB v2.0 adapters or peripherals out there yet, and they are expensive so I don't think it's anywhere near worth it right now.

Just put a 3.5" HD in your carputer and don't worry about it ;P