USB stick or portable hard drive?

forestfanstill

Our family in america miss out on our son growing up etc and we are saving our home movies of holidays, sports events and school plays etc on usb sticks as they are plug and play on our tv.

The question I have is if I used one of the many Portable Hard Drives available would they play the same way on the tv? Also are some easier to use this way than others?

we often have exchanges with our family in the States who send us their usb sticks and we send ours to them but maybe this way we could save more on one device as the sticks tend to get bad sectors the more they are used.

I thank you so much for your help

macman

Are you seriously proposing posting fragile hard drives back and forwards across the Atlantic? You'd have to pack them very securely and pay a lot in fees. Why not use some form of FTP transfer service and then they can copy them to a flash drive at their end?
Flash drives are not suitable for long term storage anyway, they eventually fail (or get lost).
If you must post them, then DVD's would be the cheapest (lightest) way.

forestfanstill

macman wrote: »

Are you seriously proposing posting fragile hard drives back and forwards across the Atlantic? You'd have to pack them very securely and pay a lot in fees. Why not use some form of FTP transfer service and then they can copy them to a flash drive at their end?
Flash drives are not suitable for long term storage anyway, they eventually fail (or get lost).
If you must post them, then DVD's would be the cheapest (lightest) way.

Thank you for answering however the cost is not an issue as staff rates at dhl mean I am paying almost the same as sending a letter. As for packing as long as it is packed in foam it would work better and as the family is so big state side.... well that is not the issue at hand here as all I asked was if they were plug and play the same as flash drives

debitcardmayhem

Import duties perhaps, being confiscated, being appropriated by fair or foul means. Use Dropbox/Ubuntu One/Sky Drive/email , but hey yes they are PnP unless they are being used on iAnymachines

neilwoods

Be much better to online storage or cloud storage. Lot quicker and more convenient and safer.

Yes you can use portable hard drive, probably require it to be formatted to FAT32. Also hard drive will be more susceptible to damage if roughly handled.

As said, use DVD, cheap to buy and send, if they get lost, just send another.

Kernel_Sanders

Have you considered regular contact with your son via a video service such as Skype?

Myser

If you are looking for long term reliability/archival, opt for a solid-state drive or USB stick.

Especially if transporting it frequently. Hard-drives are susceptible to mechanical damage due to vibration etc.

Many people also have problems with external hard-drives failing and then have trouble recovering the data.

forestfanstill

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

Have you considered regular contact with your son via a video service such as Skype?

our son does get to chat with some of his family via web cam but as he is part of a drama club and is in many a play it is things like these his grandpapernts miss out on. yes we can send dvd but find they only work on computers and not standard dvd players when getting to the usa.

macman

forestfanstill wrote: »

our son does get to chat with some of his family via web cam but as he is part of a drama club and is in many a play it is things like these his grandpapernts miss out on. yes we can send dvd but find they only work on computers and not standard dvd players when getting to the usa.

Depends on the player, but not if you format them correctly.

Probi

What about using something like http://www.!!!!!!/ it is a file sharing site where you can upload up to 10GB of files, and then share them with other users.

Havent actually tried it myself but found it on google and it looks pretty good.

superjaggybunnet

Why not create your own google website.

https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fsites.google.com%2F&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fsites.google.com%2F&service=jotspot&passive=true&ul=1

It is free.

Upload photo's, video, etc and then send links to anyone you want to have access.

Then you won't need to post anything!