HARD DRIVE (1 Viewer)

[speedypancake]

I've enjoyed playing around with your media portal program since Christmas. I got a Hauppauge Nova-T card and an AC3 / 5.1 Creative Audigy sound card to go with my Comaq Presario Pentium 4, 2.66GHz 120GB Desktop.

I also invested in a lot of new cabling as I'm running everything off the PC in the dining room but watching on our widescreen TV in the living room. The S-Video output seems to be the best quality I can achieve and it looks acceptable if not brilliant. And I've fitted a TV signal distribution box / amp fitted in the loft.

I'm now considering a dedicated 500GB hard drive to store our videos / pics / mp3's etc. My question is (finally would an external USB hard drive work well and would it be able to deliver movies etc at the required rate / performance etc.?

Cheers for any thoughts etc
Speedy

 

[Callifo]

It would be fine for storage purposes, as they are approx 1/3 the speed of an internal hdd. You would still need an internal boot drive though as they wouldnt be able to handle that task. Also if you planned to record and watch a movie at the sametime, that *may* be a problem.

 

[speedypancake]

OK - that's fine, I'll be keeping the original internal 120GB drive for booting / programs etc. Still not sure if the external USB HD will let me "stream" movies etc direct, or if I'll have to pre-load them onto the internal drive first????
Cheers

 

[dpirs]

I stream movies (normal DIVX files 1-2 CDs pro movie) over 100Mb LAN without problems. USB drive is (USB 2.0 of course) even faster so you shouldn't have any problems.

But I don't know how it works with HDTV and MPG2 (normal DVD) movies.

 

[speedypancake]

I stream movies (normal DIVX files 1-2 CDs pro movie) over 100Mb LAN without problems. USB drive is (USB 2.0 of course) even faster so you shouldn't have any problems.

But I don't know how it works with HDTV and MPG2 (normal DVD) movies.

Cool. I imagine I'll be storing most movie files as DIVX.
Thanks

 

[tfro71]

there are also external sata disks so they should solve any performance problem.

 

[wishywashy]

I use an external usb 2.0 drive that I have put DVD's on and it plays them without incident.

 

[speedypancake]

Thanks

OK - thanks guys for all the inside info. I'll try and pick up hard drive at the weekend!

Cheers
Speedy