Octopus Overlords

I got my son and daughter-in-law one for Christmas because they have so much stuff on their computer, and thought perhaps they could move some of the mp3's and picture files onto the external. It is a 300GB hard drive, so that should help them out some. My question is this: How do they work? After you put things on them, can you use them from the external drive if it's hooked up to your computer, or do you have to put them back onto your main computer for them to work? They didn't get to stay long at home for the holidays, so I never had a chance to read the instructions and all the paraphenilia that came in the box, and am very curious about them.

You just plug them into a USB2.0 or Firewire slot and away you go (actually, it may need to be plugged into an electrical outlet as well, not sure).

They're great.

They work just like any other drive on your system. Depending on the interface you have, it might be slower, though - using them as data storage for things like MP3s (I have my entire library on one) is a good idea; running an FPS game off of one probably is not. While my current drive enclosure is a 480mb/s USB2 connection (a 400mb/s firewire enclosure failed after 2 weeks ), effective speed is limited since the drive is attached to a server and is accessed over a 100mb ethernet connection. All of the PCs in the house map a drive to it (7 currently), so everyone has access to the music.

I've got an 80 Gig USB 2.0(7200rpm) that I've had for over a year. It works great! I can take it to whatever computer I'm using and it automatically works.
With my laptop (which is also 7200 rpm) I really haven't noticed any difference.It's not a whole lot more noticable on my desktops either.
Originally I used it with my laptop for gaming and it worked great. Now I have PCs with much larger HDs and so I just use it for data storage.

Thanks to all of you. Now I think I just might go and get myself one too..

It is cheaper to get an external enclosure and a harddrive than a full setup to begin with. I got my external drive at a garage sale ($20 for a 40 gig) and upgraded it to a 160 gig drive. A friend of mine bought an enclosure at newegg for $30 and you can get 120 gig drives for $60.

I have all kinds of stuff on mine and have never had a problem. Just make sure to get a usb 2.0 or firewire drive and you should be good. You can even play games from it (but the load times are a little high).

Thanks EvilHomer3K, I'll remember that advise.

EvilHomer3k wrote:It is cheaper to get an external enclosure and a harddrive than a full setup to begin with. I got my external drive at a garage sale ($20 for a 40 gig) and upgraded it to a 160 gig drive. A friend of mine bought an enclosure at newegg for $30 and you can get 120 gig drives for $60.

I have all kinds of stuff on mine and have never had a problem. Just make sure to get a usb 2.0 or firewire drive and you should be good. You can even play games from it (but the load times are a little high).

i can attest to this. through a great sale, i was able to get a 250gb drive and enclosure for $150. even now, you could probably not do much better than that, and i've had the drive for over 6 months. the enclosure is also highly durable. fully enclosed aluminum.