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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

Hi would there be a performance issue with playing back Hi Def movies from an external hard drive. As i understand internal hard drives are quicker then external ones. thanks...


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  #1  
Old 5th Apr 2008, 04:10
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

Hi would there be a performance issue with playing back Hi Def movies from an external hard drive. As i understand internal hard drives are quicker then external ones.
thanks
  #2  
Old 5th Apr 2008, 09:11
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

If you're plugged into a USB1.1 port then you can't play back Hi Def movies through it. If you're plugged into a USB2 or a firewire port then you can. It makes no difference which disk you have in the external caddy.
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  #3  
Old 6th Apr 2008, 14:47
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

Does this hold true for Bluray and HD DVD movies which are heavily encoded?
  #4  
Old 6th Apr 2008, 14:56
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

How do you propose putting either of those formats onto an external hard drive?
  #5  
Old 7th Apr 2008, 02:15
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

Hypothetically speaking if it could be done would there be a performance issue?
  #6  
Old 7th Apr 2008, 02:24
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

HD DVD-ROM has a single-layer capacity of 15 GB, and a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB.

Assuming dual-layer and assuming that there's a minimum 2 hours DVD material on the disk that gives a transfer rate of 4.1MB/sec or 33 Mbit/sec. At its worst XP cuts the transfer capability of USB2 to 200Mbit/sec so you're well within the limits there. I agree there's compression but that's not processed until the datastream gets into memory.

A dual layer Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB, almost six times the capacity of a dual layer DVD. so those figures multiply up by 5/3 and you average 55 Mbit/sec. That's still only a quarter of your Microsoft-restricted USB2 bandwidth.

Firewire's higher capacity than USB2.
  #7  
Old 7th Apr 2008, 02:36
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

Well you really know your stuff thanks for yur quick reply.
I guess this is how the 360 add on is able to play HD DVDs.
Ok so performance will only become an issue by the time it gets to graphics hardware or decoding.
  #8  
Old 7th Apr 2008, 23:44
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

Idea: A hard drive hooked up with eSATA will also work - get an adapter, plug it into a internal SATA slot and a SATA power connector and you'll have 3.0gb/s which should be more than enough. As stated before, other things will work, but if you're really worried about it just check and see if you have a SATA slot handy.
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  #9  
Old 8th Apr 2008, 03:23
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

I have an old motherboard i think has a sata connection on the board but pretty sure i dont have an esata slot. Could u post sum links of the kind of sata drives u wer suggestin?
thanks
  #10  
Old 8th Apr 2008, 06:20
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Default Need Advise on External Hard drive

I dunno any UK sites, but you should be able to find eSATA drives pretty much anywhere alongside traditional USB ones. You can also take the disk out of the enclosure temporarily and remove the adapter while stringing a eSATA cable out instead, afaik most of them are actually SATA drives hooked to a USB adapter.
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