I have "searched" but not found what I need to know. In buying a burner what do I want to be sure have and not have in the product. I will use only to backup info on computer and photos. No interest in music.
How much will I have to pay to get a decent product? I currently an on a 98-2 version computer with 512 Ram, is other info important? I want to put pictures on CD and send to friends and have copies in case my computer goes "belly-up"! Also backup whatever else I have on my computer. Am I thinking of the right product to do these things with easily?
Appreciate any feedback you all can give me! Dorothy
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They do have external drives and burners but you pay a premium price for the privilege of having it sit on your desk instead of inside the computer box.
Now that you say you have 4 GB free HD space you may want to consider a new primary hard drive and use the current one for back up. A hard drive is really (typically) easy to install.
But there is a certain appeal to having a portable burner. (That is what made me buy an external Zip drive about seven years ago. I thought it would be a great way to transport files. ….It has not moved from the place I put it seven years ago ~:( …So much for portability)
Hi Dorothy, I have an external HD, its a firewire LaCie and it is really easy to use. I just leave it plugged in to my Macs, and after I am finished looking at or editing a bunch of photos, I put them all over onto it. I always put the originals there, and you can back up all your good stuff so easily. I save copies of the photos on the BigMac that I am presently working on. You can always burn them onto a CD, but the external HD is so easy, at least for me. Everything ends up in one place that is easy to access. But the CDs are really nice for presents for family, just burn ’em and mail ’em. (I don’t use my old Zip drive either, its too small.) I do have an awful lot of photos, too many now that the whole family has digital cameras, it gets rather messy. Jane
You just need a basic burner.You can find an internal one for under $75. External may cost a smidgeon more. Don’t spend extra money for a Firewire (IEEE-1394)-compatible burner because you don’t have it. (Win XP only).
Extra hard drives are nice but tough to share the photos with friends and relatives. Easier to burn them a CD after you’ve edited the pictures the PSE. 🙂
I have found the Lite-On brand to be very dependable and one of the cheaper drives. The best price I found on them was at www.newegg.com. A GREAT company to deal with…best prices and FAST service. If you would rather not do on-line shopping, Sam’s Club/Wal-Mart. Good Luck!
Thank you all…Pete, Jane, JoAnn, Paul and Joe!!!!! Decisions, decisions…Well since I really want to send CDs to friends, maybe the external hard drive thing is out? And I want an external CD burner (not internal)…so guess what,nmore $$$$$, I guess! That external hard drive does sound good though!
My HP computer is pretty "low line" and 3 years old, so don’t want to add internal deal.
Except for the C Drive demanding a "surface scan of clusters" occasionally I guess it is still okay! I don’t know if the surface scan thing is a really bad sign or not??? Anyone know?
My daughter did a complete backup about a month ago…but I need to be able to do it when I want to more often of course.
I assume a CD burner I would would need for my 98 would work on the newer PC systems also, right???
Thanks again everybody and I hope some of you can shed some light on the above questions. Dorothy
Dorothy clearly states she wants to be able to burn to CDs so she can share with friends. External HDs are great, but they sure won’t serve that function! I agree with Cory and the other person who recommended one of the lesser expensive external burners. Just make sure, Dorothy, that you get one that you can actually plug in!
You might want to do some "shopping" at a computer store so you can talk to somebody and make sure whatever you choose is compatible with the ports you have available on your computer. Once you’ve identified what you need, you could do your buying at one of the lesser expensive places. Lite-On drives and newegg.com are both reliable, but you need to make sure that you’re getting the right thing or it’s a hassle to do returns! Not to mention the frustration of getting a new toy and not being able to use it. 🙂
Edit: Whoops! You and I were typing at the same time, Dorothy!
The USB 2.0 standard is newer than your PC, so unless you have added new USB ports to the machine, yours are most likely 1.1.
That being said, you should still purchase an external burner that is 2.0 compatible. It should operate at the lower speed of 1.1 just fine. If you ever do add new USB ports, or get a newer system, the drive would be able to operate at its top speed.
Come to think of it, I don’t recall the last time I saw an external USB CD-RW that was NOT 2.0…
You can always count my vote as a "yea" when it comes to adding new toys!
Today you might also consider using a DVD/CD burner, where you can put your data/image backup files onto a DVD with 4.65 gigabyte storage. The price of those disks is starting to really be reasonable, even for DVD-RW’s.
Bob has a good point. I keep forgetting they’re extremely good for data storage. The price will be significantly higher for an external one, though, compared to the cost of an external CD burner. They’re still sitting around $300 for a firewire/USB 2.0 unit. But, check that out carefully, because even though USB 2.0 is backwards compatible, I’m not sure if you can get reliable burns to DVD at USB 1.0. Does anybody know? Since I have firewire, I haven’t bothered to think about – let alone research – that aspect.
But is it actually operating from a USB 1.0 connection? Usually something installed internally is connected to the mobo or a card and has a faster connection rate. At least in my old dog that’s true.
Leen, as always, you are so right! It’s truly amazing how fast one can fill a hard drive, even one of 80 GB. (And to think my first hard drive was 30 MB, and was large for its time….)
I don’t know for Mac, but on my PC, an hour of video from my MiniDV camcorder takes 20Gb, unedited. I need another 1Gb to prepare a SVCD and some more MB for editing. That, with the fact that my software requires around 512Mb for a comfortable editing workflow… :nothing:
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