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Some of you probably suffer from the same problem that I have; it's just not big enough. Sure, you confide in your close friends, they all nod sympathetically, tell you that 'size isn't important', yet really, we all know that it is. Especially when we're talking about hard drives in Netbooks!

In my case, you've likely heard about my lovely little Asus eeePC 8g - a nice little 7" unit with 8GB of solid state storage. Which is great for most things, but not everything.

But, if I'm on the road with it and want to rip some of my movies to take along, I'm limited in either the number of movies or the quality of the rip. Or I was, until I got my hands on this cool toy.

It's an iProDrive 500GB external USB drive. A sleek little unit that works as advertised, right out of the box. It's pretty inexpensive too. If you think you need a larger unit, I believe Future Shop can help you out there -- I think I saw a 1TB unit at a shop in Edmonton over the weekend.

Since I run Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my eeePC, I was concerned that there may be compatibility issues, as the box and enclosed software only refer to Windows, but as I found out, that only refers to the enclosed software.

The drive comes with a USB cable and an AC power supply. Unfortunately, it will not run off the power provided through your computer's USB port.

The drive uses standard (USB 1.1) or Hi Speed USB (USB 2). Obviously the data transfer will be faster if you plug it into a High Speed USB port.

I simply plugged it into my net book and *poof* 1/2 Terabyte of instant storage goodness ready for me to fill with media, or whatever.

Whatever?
My needs are likely different from yours, so here's a few more use-cases where  a large capacity USB drive could work:

Students
A portable USB drive that you can connect to the campus workstations means that you can easily store and backup your work. Sure, a small thumb drive would work for notes and the like, but if you're an Arts student, you likely work with large files (photos, videos, music) in non-compressed formats -- the more storage the better.

Simple off-site backup
I've written before about USB hard drive docking stations as backup hardware; you leave the docking station attached to your computer and swap in fresh drives to make offsite backups.

Usinge one of these, you remove the docking station from the equation. Just use a couple of these iProdrives, simply backup your system to the first drive and store it offsite. Then, when you've made another backup, swap the new one for the first backup. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Test OS or Virtualization on your netbook
This one is likely a stretch for most, unless you're a bit of an OS geek, but I'm thinking of trying various operating systems on my netbook. Since the netbook doesn't have a CDrom, I'll have to configure it to boot from the USB HD.

Or, I could run some virtualization software from the HD, but I'm thinking I may be pushing the performance limits of my netbook -- hmm, time to upgrade?

Windows 7 and XP
As I mentioned, my netbook doesn't have a CD/DVD, so to get my movies ripped to it, hooked it up to my home desktop, a dual-boot XP/Win7 box.

Flawless. I'd already ripped the movies to my existing internal HD, so I just needed to copy them to the portable USB HD. Once there, it was a simple matter to connect the USB HD to the netbook, and my movies were now available, on the smaller screen. Mission accomplished.

Well, I've mentioned a few uses for this puppy, so now it's your turn. How would you use 500GB of USB connected external storage? I'm curious, so please, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Message Edited by Laura on 12-09-2009 02:28 PM