External Exclosure + HDD question(s)

Hi guys, I know this isn't really about a notebook hard drive per se, but I am going to use this to extend my current notebook hard drive.

I want to go ahead and buy an enclosure and hard drives separately because I had a WD MyBook which has failed (or is starting to). The problem with that hard drive is that it simply stops data transfer after a certain point and even when I'm watching a video I can only watch about 10 minutes or so before it stops for like 1 and a half minutes...it's like it's buffering, like a YouTube video.

So anyway, I'm considering this this Vantec Nexstar 4 (I guess it's 4) enclosure and this hard drive.

I have a couple of questions:

1) Is this enclosure any good?

2) Is this hard drive any good?

3) Should I buy two of the hard drives for RAID 1? How likely is failure if the enclosure/hard drives will be in one place (my dorm) most of the time and possibly moved around occasionally? Also, what do you guys think about having just of these hard drives in there as separate drives (RAID 0 is probably overkill for me); I think eventually I'd be able to use the space as I've got about 250 GB of data used up already and I imagine I'll be exchanging and storing a good bit of data when I'm in school.


Edit: I'm now considering getting Green Power drives as they'll be more efficient, any suggestions of ones that are on NewEgg?

 

Are you planning on using eSATA or USB?

 

Thats one big momma.

I would also factor in whether or not you plan to use network storage or not in the future. If so perhaps you might consider looking into NAS enclosures.

Will you be moving that thing around much?

+1 on the Green power drives.

 

@ PhilFlow: I think I'm going to go eSATA since I can just add an expresscard for it and it's a good deal faster than USB 2.0, but I'm going to get an enclosure with both just in case I have to use it somewhere else.

@ micka: To be honest, I'm not quite sure how NAS works or is different from being a networked file server computer but either way I'm reasonably sure I just want a nice external enclosure for my computer when I'm watching a movie or something and occasionally backing up school data.

I imagine it would seldom be moved around, I just want this unit for maybe some data stability as I've had one hard drive start to break down with a frustrating lack of a backup alternative that would be in one place.



How often do you think one of these externally mounted hard drives fails?

 

Good choice to go for eSATA. For the choice of drives I recommend checking the reviews at Tom's Hardware and Storagereview.com.

 

i agree with the comment about NAS enclosures.. or a TURN KEY NAS

i have a MAXTOR SHARED STORAGE II 1tb and love it.... it also allows me to hook up external USB drives to the NAS and to share PRINTERS thru it too..

and if you don't want to use it as a NAS (hooked up to a router),,, you can always hook it up to the RJ45 network port and pretend it's an external HDD