MP3 player versus external hard drive - for music.

[Feanor]

I...

I am bringing my HD 600's and I need a headphone amp because mine is too heavy and bulky. So I may opt fopr the stereo link DAC. the advantage of this unit is that it completely bypasses the DAC in the computer and directly sends the info from USB cable into the unit. The unit is also a Headphone amplifier and can also connect to a stereo. It's cheap enough as well at $170.00. http://www.stereo-link.com/Static/Products.html

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The device is the concept I've been thinking about for a while but hadn't found. This unit has the right functionality and price.

By the way the external HD is a no brainer if walk-around portability for your whole collection is not a priortity. I have an iPod Mini which as more than enough capacity for my portable needs. I load a few day's worth of listening from my main HD, (an external attached to my desktop), to my iPod and away I go. Personnally if I were buying a portable player today, I'd go for the Apple Nano.

At the office I don't listen to music, but people who do most often use portable HD attached to their company-provided laptops or desktops.

[noddin0ff]

Since you have a laptop. I'd consider getting a 2.5" external hard drive and an enclosure. You could upgrade your laptop's hard drive with it and then use the one you took out as an external. Win-win. There's also a portability benefit because enclosures for 2.5" drives are just about pocket sized.

The downside is that 2.5" drives for laptops are more expensive per Gig than 3.5". But if you consider it an upgrade for your laptop...that takes the sting out.

I've bought most my laptop drives here

and 2.5" enclosures here

Putting a drive in an enclosure is simple. I've had very good experiences with the IBM/Hitachi Travelstar drives.

[emorphien]

I don't think a 2.5" external drive is going to be wise for him in this situation. As he said the 60gb players don't hold enough for him and laptop hard drives reach 100gb, which isn't much improvement. A 250-300 gb hard drive in an external 3.5" enclosure (I recommend Mapower if you can get it in Canada, I know newegg has them) will be more cost effective and hopefully hold most if not all of his collection.

The laptop can certainly store some data though, but 2.5" drives just aren't that cost effective.

edit: and that macsales site is a bit pricy for those hard drives, probably for the enclosures too but I'm not going to bother comparing to newegg, zzf, chiefvalue and the like

[noddin0ff]

I don't think a 2.5" external drive is going to be wise for him in this situation. As he said the 60gb players don't hold enough for him and laptop hard drives reach 100gb, which isn't much improvement. A 250-300 gb hard drive in an external 3.5" enclosure (I recommend Mapower if you can get it in Canada, I know newegg has them) will be more cost effective and hopefully hold most if not all of his collection.

The laptop can certainly store some data though, but 2.5" drives just aren't that cost effective.

edit: and that macsales site is a bit pricy for those hard drives, probably for the enclosures too but I'm not going to bother comparing to newegg, zzf, chiefvalue and the like

I'll let him decide what's wise, but I mostly agree on the $/GB argument. Just presenting another kind of option. Good point on the prices. Newegg was about 7-12% less on list price.

Seagate has a 160GB 2.5" but it's over $300. Still less than an iPod though.
The value per gig is in favor of 3.5". However, portability, the upgrade factor, and the backup drive factor should be considered. Having everything as 2.5" means that you have a ready replacement for when your laptop HD fails (if you install an OS on it).

[RGA]

thanks for the suggestion -- but I think i will go for a little less in the way of portability and go with mass storage -- I am considering this 250gig unit for $161.00 Cad http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...5613&CatId=530

For a bit more they have a beefed up case (indistructable hard drive -- lol let's get the sledge hammer out to see. http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...4218&CatId=530

[noddin0ff]

thanks for the suggestion -- but I think i will go for a little less in the way of portability and go with mass storage -- I am considering this 250gig unit for $161.00 Cad http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...5613&CatId=530

For a bit more they have a beefed up case (indistructable hard drive -- lol let's get the sledge hammer out to see. http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...4218&CatId=530

good prices for $CAD! I probably don't need to mention this but make sure your computer supports USB2.0 otherwise you're stuck with transfer at USB1.1 and that is painful. Make sure you post the before and after Sledge-O-Matic shots.

[Woochifer]

good prices for $CAD! I probably don't need to mention this but make sure your computer supports USB2.0 otherwise you're stuck with transfer at USB1.1 and that is painful. Make sure you post the before and after Sledge-O-Matic shots.

Definitely an issue, but not a dealbreaker. My laptop only supports USB 1.1, but after I plugged a USB 2.0 card into the PC card slot, the transfers with my external HD worked fine. Not sure if the USB 2.0 card though can charge/power up devices that draw their power from the USB port (such as iPods or those smaller external HDs that don't need external adaptors).

[emorphien]

Seagate has a 160GB 2.5" but it's over $300.

Ahh that's true I forgot those were out now. It's so expensive I tend to stop paying attention to the high end 2.5" drives.

Sounds like he's going to go with the 3.5" drive though from the post above this... $300 buys you about what, 400 or 500 gigs now? That one drive is bigger than the two in my deskop combined.