17 replies to this topic

[ish420]

Yes, I'm back. No more complains. Only a nifty idea. The WD My Passport now comes in 400GB and 500GB portable hdd. I was thinking of the cool possibilities with mounting the Pandora on top of these portable hdds, using either a custom case or the all mighty Velcro and shortening the usb cable.

400GB
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136300

500GB
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822136301

And if possible, strap two of the 500GB HDDs and have a Pandora with 1TB storage.

[krooked]

power life would be greatly shortened. i have a 320gb elite i plan to use for it, but only for copying things off, not as a filesystem. if they had to stay attached i would just scotch tape it, no need to make it into a full case.

[palmertech]

It would be stupid to strap it TO the pandora, where the extra weight is very noticable.

Much better to have a cable going to your pocket, or to a belt mount.

[Benjiro]

Yes, I'm back. No more complains. Only a nifty idea. The WD My Passport now comes in 400GB and 500GB portable hdd. I was thinking of the cool possibilities with mounting the Pandora on top of these portable hdds, using either a custom case or the all mighty Velcro and shortening the usb cable.

...

And if possible, strap two of the 500GB HDDs and have a Pandora with 1TB storage.

Don't forget a switch or some other capability to disable the HD when you don't need it.

Those WD still drain a lot off power, even while idle. Maybe your better off looking into a small 1.8" drive, to car around, and use... Running 2 external HD's on the Pandora is asking for battery trouble. Hell, i'm rather sure you are not able to do so. One WD Passport is limited to a short USB cable, because a PC USB port is just capable off providing enough juice to power it. Using a long cable = to much loss = forget it. In other words, if one is capable off doing that power usage, what are 2 going to do?

And 1TB WD Passport? Don't forget, when there are going to be true 1TB 2.5" drive ( what the WD Passport uses ), at that time, you can already have 256GB USB sticks or 64GB SD's ( still a lot safer = no moving parts )... I don't think there is a need to carry for full dvd rips, or 1080p rips with the pandora ( thats the only thing i see where you need 1TB, or even 500GB for on the Pandora ).

From my experience on the Dell x50v ( 3.5", 640*480 screen ), all you need is about 350MB divx/xvid rips per 50min of video data. And that was with xvid, divx. Imagine what you can have with h.264 movies.

PS1 "backups". Compress them, save's you another 30 to 100% on there size. All the other ( older but known to run on the Pandora ) emulators are smaller, so little to no need for massive space.

Your better off looking into plugging in one WD Passport, and copy the files over to your SD's ( using the build in OS ), and then run off the SD's like "normal". Only use the external backup, for when you need to move data over ( and your not near your home pc/server ).

[gibberish]

stupid idea. if you need that much data to be portable then pandora is the wrong device. better off with a netbook with a replaced hdd.

[thebrainwasher]

i personally think that 2 external hdd will drain too much battery.

i suggest that you should first wait until you can find a bigger battery for pandora ...let's say a >10.000 mAh ... (like the bigger ones for eee pc) and then you should consider adding half a kg to your pandora

[Frogboy]

Interesting concept and would be neat, in theory, if Pandora actually had a custom HD case that the Pandora could slide onto and attach without a cable (think flip video except more seemless) but would probably be fairly impractical. I can't imagine needing more than the 64gb that it'll be capable of and I can see the Pandora team altering the firmware to support the next higher capacity SD standard that will inevitably come out before Pandora's lifecycle runs out.

[fischju2000]

You could try 'SD RAID' where you join multiple SD cards. 8 64GB cards wouldn't add much bulk and = 500GB

[Wonslung]

i plan on just mounting a samba or nfs share via wifi for storage needs past the 2 sd slots that it comes with

[jbr]

+1 for the utility belt mounted hard drive idea.
Even though I think this idea is totally useless and wasteful (for me at least), I think I would do that just to be able to say I have a hard disk drive on my belt.

[typs lik dis]

I would just pocket the tiniest USB HD I could find and run the cable from my pocket if I needed that much storage everywhere. Luckily, after spending months with just a 4 GB MSPD in my PSP, I'm pretty sure the three Sandisk 8 GB extreme-III cards I found (for only $30 after a fairly awesome rebate!) will do. Come to think of it, I've been doing pretty damn well with rebates the past few days; first 5 HP mice for -$18, and now this! /brag

[fiveseven]

Hmm, how much of a drain on battery would a usb card reader be?
If hard drives are going to be a massive drain, maybe replacing them with more SD cards could be an alternative?

[fischju2000]

You can get the same 1.8" drives that are in iPods and USB enclosures for them.

[tazg]

if there was a wireless network drive with a battery it would be perfect

[CandidStan]

Must I say this once more? THAT'S ALOTA FREAKIN PORN.