I am going to buy a hardrive to back up my songs but don't know whether to get a 300, 400 or 500GB one?
Answers:
A backup HD normally do not have any added features. If its preformatted it ready to go out of the box; plug and play means that it says plug and play; seek time is how fast the HD can find and how long it takes the info you are looking to pop up; and the fan helps to cool and spread the heat but is not really needed unless it a big back up server tower. If its only going to be for the music get a small portable HD like western digital 80 to 160 GB HD. If you are going to use it for other things too then get the 500 GB because you never know when you are goping to fill it up. I have two one 400 and 500 both self made and they are both almost maxed.
preformatted means that the drive has been formatted as NTFS OR FAT as far as size of the drive it comes down to cost plug and play means that the drive will work straight out of the box you do not need to get one which is preformatted i would suggest that a case which has firewire usb 2.0 and e-sata be used to allow for any type of computer.
I dont think you need much drive space.
if you want it a protable harddisk buy LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface
or if you want internal one buy Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ
That depends how much music files you have. You need to get one with a fan because it can overheat easily
The bigger the drive the more you will lose when it crashes! The computer community trend is bigger and bigger, but when they crash, and they ALL do sooner or later, there is a TON of stuff lost!
if ur only using it to backup then a usb2 (400) connection would b fine, but if u want to transfer music back and forth or edit or listen to the music on the fly go with firewire 400/800 (supposedly has lower cpu overhead) or esata1 (1500) or esata2 (3000) for the best transfer rates. You will need firewire and Esata connectors respectively. Seagate Freeagents are pretty good. Good Luck
500 GB more space
And things also depend on how you want your music to sound, mp3 sounds good at minimum 128 kbps. you don't want to go lower than that unless you go for variable rate, say, 64 to 128 so you don't waste a lot of space on silent spots. Download free Switch from TuCows, PCWorld.com, or the NCH Center at http://www.nch.com.au/components/. IF your files have been ripped from a CD at a wave rate of 1411, which sounds great, but takes up 40 or 50 MB per song (depending on the song), switch rates to 128 kbps, get ten times as many songs into the same space, and it still sounds pretty good, depending on how well refined your ear is. If your files are already small, don't make them bigger. And if Windows Media or Real Player or whatever you're using is set to rip at less than 128 kbps, you may want to change it unless you like cymbals sounding like trash cans.
300GB should be sufficient
for long term would go for 400 or 5oo so you dont have to buy another one later
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