External Hard Drive recommendations?

Convert the FAT32 file system to NTFS. If you have any video files that you want to store on this device, and they are larger than 4Gb, they may well be truncated if you copy them to it. FAT32 has a maximum single file size of 4Gb. Not an issue for photos, music etc. but not much use for video.

I think you can check if the Passport is NTFS by finding it in My Computer, Right click on the Passport drive then Properties.
It will mention FileSystem: NTFS - both my USB drives are NTFS
Close that properties window
Then locate Local drive C: in My Computer
Right click properties
Does that mention File system: NTFS (or FAT16 is that right?)

If the drive C: is not NTFS then Roscoe may well be right and you'll have an 'issue'

Mike

Absoloutely right, let's all hope Lilly's O/S was set up as NTFS!

Why would that give a issue, it really make no sense to me to be honest.
Windows XP supports all these formats I believe NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, FAT12, exFAT, CDFS, UDF, DFS & IFS so why would it be a matter on what kind of format XP is installed?

Personally I format all my External HD's to FAT32.... that way I can access them from DOS if I boot from a floppy or CD (DOS USB drivers need to be loaded). I can also access the drive from Windows 98SE using this driver link

All imaging software lets you split the image into smaller chunks and DVD files are already split into 1gb VOB's. You use FAT32 on SD cards anyway. I do movies and I wouldn't risk backing up a file bigger that 4gb to an external drive, it only takes a hiccup either to or from the drive for it to get a few corrupted bytes.

shim

I've been looking at getting a 500gb external hard drive and wondered if you need upnp to stream video to a tv or is this only on a network drive rather than usb?

This threads about two years old There are some more recent threads on Ext. HDD's but not about streaming.

The External drive is generally just for storing files. Normally you need a separate box such as these from WD to plug the Ext. HDD into, although by now there are probably combined ones available.

If you live near any computer fairs they have a lot of multimedia HDD boxes usually quite cheap. They need to come with a remote control.

Hi Algi,

Many thanks for your reply. I didnt notice the thread was so old when I was searching for the answer. Anyway I have had a look at the WD media streamers they look good. I also copied a film onto a usb stick and it played through my xbox360 perfectly, so I'm now guessing perhaps you dont need to worry to much about UPNP for streaming unless its a network attached drive rather than USB. I've also been looking at a 1tb external hard drive here and they all seem to be the same pretty much on features so decided probabaly going to get a 1tb rather than 500gb as the price difference is very small. I'll let you know if it streams movies through my xbox to my tv ok

I'm not familiar with xbox, but have heard of people using them to watch movies. I think they also do BluRay.

Looks like 1TB drives have really come down in price

I paid £60 last year for a WD "Essentials" 1Tb drive from Tesco, which seemed to be about the going rate. I wouldn't be keen to have one as my main "working" hard drive as I still suspect the smaller capacity drives to be more reliable for long-term use, but given all I do with this thing is plug it into the PC occasionally to dump the contents of the camera memory card I think it'll be ok.

I keep meaning to track down a cheap MK1 Xbox to fiddle with. You can persuade them to run Linux with a bit of poking about, they make surprisingly good media PCs for photo/video/web browsing.