Ok I posted this on AA but something got lost in the translation.

I am heading to South Korea to teach English and I can't bring all my music with me. So I asked about MP3 players - Apple and Cowon seem to be rated the best.

However both players do not hold very mcu information -- the top ones store 60gigs and cost $500.00cad.

I have recorded a few of my cd's to my hard drive and with Lossless WMA each cd so far ranges between 350 - 550mb. (half a gig per cd which means that i would get about 120 discs on the top MP3 players.

External hard discs at 250gigs are half the price. Granted no video playback -- but I do not need that...nor do I really need the portability.

The big external hard drives are bulkier but I'm only really making ONE trip there and then a year later making one trip back.

So I am thinking rather than paying $500.00 for a 60 gig mp3 player that it makes more sense to spend $250.00 or so for a big storage (even 160gog would be a big increase) and then spend another $100.00 on a portable flash mp3 player(preferably one that runs on a AA or a AAA battery.

Is there a downside to this idea? It seems to me that all I lose is the all in one case portability but I gain huge storage space -- I am recording in a lossless format - I was unimpressed with the 128kbps (or whatever) with my HD 600s.

Anywho if anyone has some idea as a better alternative that would be nice -- I absolutely want to do this as cheaply as I can. My Laptop is 60gig but I don't want to load it up with too much music - the external drive would be a back-up drive as well which is why I am thinking going that route.