Chinavasion | China Gadgets BlogWholesale Electronics and the Gadget Business

By Baya Harrison

HDD multimedia players and digital video recorders (DVRs) are all the craze right now setting one up for the first time is a piece of cake with these 3 ridiculously easy steps.

1. Selecting the Hard Disk Drive Enclosure
   
2. Installing and formatting your Hard Disk Drive
   
3. Choosing the format and formatting your hard drive

1. Select the hard drive enclosure that’s right for you.

Just some of the HDD media enclosures available at Chinavasion Click on the link to learn more about the player

Before you purchase, you will need to ask yourself a few questions about the functions you want in an HDD multimedia player and the kind of hard drive you want to use it with:

Question 1: Do you want a HDD enclosure that can only play your media files or do you want to be able to record programs from your TV as well?

HDD players with recording function are a step ahead of enclosures that only play files, and their price is slightly higher to reflect this added functionality.

HDD media enclosures like this Hard Drive Media Enclosure With Hi-Def DVR also double as digital video recorders

Question 2: Does your hard drive have SATA or IDE connections? All recent hard drives use SATA, but you may still have some IDE hard drives lying around that you might want to use.

For those interested the SATA connection is above while and the IDE drive is below

Question 3: Is your hard drive 3.5” or 2.5”? A 2.5” hard drive is one inch smaller than a 3.5” hard drive who knew and also more portable. Different sized hard drives require different sized enclosures.

2.5″ HDD enclosures tend to be more portable while 3.5″ HDD enclosures are a little more permanent.

Question 4: How big is your hard drive’s memory? Some HDD enclosures support 200 GB of memory, while others can handle up to an incredible 750 GB!

The final question to ask yourself is: Do you want to play high def files on your TV? For that you’ll need an HDD enclosure with an HDMI port.

2. Putting the hard disk drive into the enclosure

After you have chosen the HDD enclosure that’s right for you, pop it open, put your hard drive in, and then close it all up again.

3. Format your HDD to its new enclosure

Connect your HDD enclosure to your computer with a USB cable. Your computer will detect the device automatically and ask you to format the hard drive in either the FAT32 or NTFS format.

What is the difference between the two and what does it mean for you? For the long detailed technically “correct” answer^{[citation needed]}, visit the Wikipedia pages on FAT32 and NTFS.

But when it comes to HDD enclosures the short story is: FAT32 lets you use your HDD enclosure to record footage from your TV. NTFS does not.

What does that mean?

If you have an HDD enclosure that only plays media files but does not record, like this HDD Media enclosure you can choose FAT32 or NTFS.

If you have an HDD enclosure that records media, you must choose FAT32 like this DVR.

That’s it! You can now record anything and everything on your TV straight to your hard disk.

You can also take your gratuitously large collection of illegally obtained movies and TV shows with you anywhere you go and watch them on the big screen of your choice.

As luck would have it, Chinavasion happens to have a large selection of HDD media players and recorders, including enclosures for 3.5” hard drives and 2.5” hard drives, enclosures for the older IDE and the newer SATA, as well as enclosures with HDMI for high-definition recording and playback.

So check out our extensive HDD drive category now and see if there isn’t something that suits your needs.