External Hard Drive

[Bogball XV]

What size of stuff has be got. 500GB is a serious amount, I know companies wouldn't use a tenth of that space. I'm asking as you can not get simple USB keys at 16GB and probably for €30. Fits on your keyring and needs no power supply. 16GB can take some amount of photos and documents.

500GB is nothing today. What happens if he stores his photos in RAW format, 16GB won't go too far? In my case, I easily have close to 300GB of music and 500GB of movies too; plus I lose loads of USB keys due to their size.
Does he run any sort of software to back up his computer? I run time machine on my mac (there are windows tools to do this as well) which backs up a complete image of my hard drive (300GB) to an external (in my case a network drive). So he may need space to do this or want to do this in the future.

I would say go for a USB powered 2.5inch external rather than a powered one for handyness and go for around 300GB for the time being.

i agree, 500gb is not that big, you should be able to get 1tb for about the same price.  I got a 500gb last year, and it's nearly full, what they don't tell you about HD and multi-million pixel cameras is that they require a lot more storage space.  I just throw all the pictures on to it (back up on cd/dvd), i've a fair few movies too (not in div-x format, which takes up no space) and they're hogs - as for all my work, it fits neatly into about 15gb on my laptop hard drive
Western Digital has a good reputation too.

[delboy]

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

Plays MKV's (Blu-Ray format) and supports DTS audio (Generation 2 only) or

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

As above but also allows you stream from your local computer network without connecting hard drives etc.

Makes for a serious setup.

Would an xbox 360 not do the same job and with the benefit of having an inbuilt harddrive whilst also allowing you to play games?

[Homer]

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

Plays MKV's (Blu-Ray format) and supports DTS audio (Generation 2 only) or

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

As above but also allows you stream from your local computer network without connecting hard drives etc.

Makes for a serious setup.

Would an xbox 360 not do the same job and with the benefit of having an inbuilt harddrive whilst also allowing you to play games?

XBox can't play MKVs out of the box. There is a work-around but it involves converting individual files to MP4 and results in quality loss

It also doesn't allow for DTS audio, used by a lot of HD movies.

[thebigfella]

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

Plays MKV's (Blu-Ray format) and supports DTS audio (Generation 2 only) or

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

As above but also allows you stream from your local computer network without connecting hard drives etc.

Makes for a serious setup.

Would an xbox 360 not do the same job and with the benefit of having an inbuilt harddrive whilst also allowing you to play games?

XBox can't play MKVs out of the box. There is a work-around but it involves converting individual files to MP4 and results in quality loss

It also doesn't allow for DTS audio, used by a lot of HD movies.

You sure about that?

[Homer]

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

Plays MKV's (Blu-Ray format) and supports DTS audio (Generation 2 only) or

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

As above but also allows you stream from your local computer network without connecting hard drives etc.

Makes for a serious setup.

Would an xbox 360 not do the same job and with the benefit of having an inbuilt harddrive whilst also allowing you to play games?

XBox can't play MKVs out of the box. There is a work-around but it involves converting individual files to MP4 and results in quality loss

It also doesn't allow for DTS audio, used by a lot of HD movies.

You sure about that?

No not sure, I know it didn't a while back. A quick Google seems to support that but couldn't tell if Microsoft have added DTS support since.

[heganboy]

drobo.com

that is all

[tyssam5]

In general use, they say usb sticks are five to ten times more durable than hard disk drives (as well as dead handy).

I say, they are infinitely easier to lose 

My 16GB stick just died, not recognised by any computer. Had been going well for a year.

[Main Street]

The exception that proves the rule.

[rosnarun]

The exception that proves the rule.

surely that is the exception that disproves the rule seeing as the main recommendation for the 16 gb stick was durability.
as for the Question ,if the photos ect are  smaller than 16 gb them store them in as many paces as possible. including on line try photobox or flicker and others

[Pangurban]

The Seagate Ext HD, is an excellent product

[flog the lot]

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/rf/1tb-hard-drive/__?t=3_1

check out this link 1 TB external hard drive for £54

[Main Street]

The exception that proves the rule.

surely that is the exception that disproves the rule seeing as the main recommendation for the 16 gb stick was durability.

The exception does not disprove the rule, as the rule does not claim perfection. 
The usb stick is designed for practical mobile storage.
Generally the usb stick / flash memory can take a lot of physical shock without any damage whereas you should treat the conventional HD carefully, avoiding vibrations/shocks/falls/ slam dunking the laptop case.

[Archie Mitchell]

I have got this yoke -

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/7977460/Western-Digital-WD-TV-HD-Media-Player/Product.html

Its great. Has 2 USB ports so you can connect anything to it, and it plays video, music and look at pictures in all formats. It is great for the HD films and tv shows I download. Also have the PS3, but it wont play all formats.