Is that the WD 1TB My Book World, if so, then don't get it, my boss had one and he said it just doesn't quite do what it says on the tin. He had the ethernet version and apparently you have to download and install WD software to any machine that you want to use to access it, real annoying user account setup process. Don't know if the Wi-Fi one is the same, but it most probably is. My advice would be to go with Seagate for all drives, INT. and EXT. they all come with 5 year warranties, make sure that the EXT. is branded as Seagate though and not just a Seagate drive in another companies chassis, then you have to take up any warranty claim with that company and I guarantee that they won't give you 5 yrs. They recently bought out Maxtor, if you're on a budget, and offer 3 yrs as standard on that branding.

I would stay away from Hitachi's drives (I work as a PC tech and me and my buddies refer to the Hitachi 'Deskstar' as the 'Deathstar' for obvious reasons)

Whatever drive you go for make sure it has as big a cache as possible, if you're going 400GB+ then you'll want 32MB cache models, slightly more expensive, but lower latency, ie. faster access (read/write) times.

I wish you good hunting and better EXT. HDD luck in the future.

EDIT: I'm not sure about their warranties, but Fujitsu Siemens drives always seem to have a good lifespan.

EDIT 2: @ Bootleg, I'm really sorry for hijacking your thread.

the internal ones will have to be 8mb buffer as i dont see any higher than that for a laptop 2nd internal, and i think it is hitachi actually

yeah, that was the western digital i was thinking of that i thought was bad too

theres one i want to check out thats a freecom wireless, mp3 streaming etc one that looks good

Are your internal HDDs SATA or IDE? I would assume SATA on an XPS m1710 (beautiful notebook by the way), just replaced the screen on one the other day after some silly women left her pen on the keyboard, then closed the lid , expensive mistake. However I digress, back to the HDDs, I know I was dissing Hitachi before, however, in the monthly trade mags that I get at work, apparently they have raised their game hugely, and overall quality control has been significantly improved, and they obviously want to prove something to the rest of the industry, as they were the first to ship the 1TB 3.5" HDD, and the first 500GB 2.5" notebook drive.

I guess they really want to show that they're not the company they used to be.

Unfortnately you are right about the 8MB cache limit on 2.5" HDDs, even Hitachi's 500GB model only has 8MB. shame really, but I guess with an XPS m1710, it won't be causing you that much trouble.

With the Freecom EXT, could you provide the model no. or a link to it, and I'll give you my honest opinion.

Take it easy

EDIT: Once again, sorry bootleg for the hijack. @ al217739: If you want you can PM me, then we can get out of the ops thread and I'll ask one of the mods to clean it so that it is back on track.

thanks. that's ok. btw, i have to say that the drive i have...an iomega mdhd500-ue has been solid. back to my original problem though, i guess really switching the movies back and forth between itunes and the drive is necessary. it seems that the simplest thing would have been when you chose not to sync the video section...what's on there stays on there unless you want to delete them. sounds like something we should ask boss prefs to look into.

bottom line is that it makes syncing not especially user friendly

Originally Posted by bootleg

thanks. that's ok. btw, i have to say that the drive i have...an iomega mdhd500-ue has been solid. back to my original problem though, i guess really switching the movies back and forth between itunes and the drive is necessary. it seems that the simplest thing would have been when you chose not to sync the video section...what's on there stays on there unless you want to delete them. sounds like something we should ask boss prefs to look into.

bottom line is that it makes syncing not especially user friendly

its really annoying that its not drag and drop, my itunes looks such a mess, wmp looks immaculate where as itunes is just a mess

as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. did you notice the new app in installer today? a video player! it allows you to upload your video directly and bypass itunes syncing altogether. it uses finder to locate the video file and then plays it through the media player. now i don't have to remove and replace videos in itunes every time i want to sync. what a coincidence. my needs...an app created! love this forum!

Awesome, you must be a happy chappy.

i appreciate that thank you