External Hard Drive?

[deztroyer]

I was thinking of buying one of them external hard drives but i was wondering if i would be able to burn dvds of them. For example i have a few IMG. DVDs in my computer internal hard drive. I was thinking if i can send the IMGs to my external hard drive would i be able to burn dvds while grabbing the file off the external hard drive? Does anyone know if it will fail or does anyone have a external hard drive that can let me know if it works.

[TheWizard]

You can still burn from an external hard drive. There is no reason why it wouldn't work properly, unless you hooked up something incorrectly.

When it comes time to burn, select Burn Image in Nero (or whichever program you use), and navigate to where the IMG is located on your external hard drive. If you have burn images before, then you'll know what I'm talking about. The external hard drive will appear just as an internal hard drive would. It will have a name associated with it and everything (i.e. D: or E:). One note, which I just remembered, Nero won't burn IMG's: only NRI, ISO, and BIN/CUE. So, either convert the image to one of the formats compatible with Nero or use another burning program.

[deztroyer]

thanks wizard.. but do you think it would be enough .. i mean its sending the img thru the usb to the burner.. wont the buffer go down or something might go wrong.. i mean isnt a ide cable faster than a usb cable to be sending data..Im using dvddecrypter to burn the IMGs.

[wicked1]

as wizard said there is no reason it shouldnt work. USB is fast enough. ATA (ide cable) is faster but not necessary to feed a burner.

[shimman]

if you use an external case with either usb2 or 1384a/b, then you would not have any problem, but watch out for programs that use too much cpu time.

the main difference between internal hard disks & external ones is dma.

if you are not new to burning disks, then you probably have heard about dma. dma stands for direct memory access meaning devices do not use cpu to move data from devices to memory. so if you read from hard disk drive with dma enabled, then it won't take much cpu time to load file to the main memory; howver, usb2 and 1394a/b don't have dma as far as i know...i am not an expert on this subject.

you probably experience higher cpu utilization (check the task manager if you are using win 2k/xp/2k3.....ctrl+del+alt) than with internal one.

so as long as you have fast enough cpu, then you won't have any problem at all. just don't play games while burning stuff....i sometime play gt2 on epsx(play station emulator while waiting the burner finishing burning)...i use dam enabled internal ide controler for both hard & burner & connected them at different channel

i hope this helps

[TheWizard]

As wicked1 pointed out, USB is plenty fast. If you want to play it totally safe, then don't do anything else while burning. That will ensure full access to the external hard drive and DVD burner, hence the read buffer should not go all the way. And heck, even if it does hit 0, the DVD burner's buffer underrun protection will kick in.

[deztroyer]

I appreciate it guys.. Now i can go buy a external hard drive..

[TheWizard]

No problem, that's why we're here.