External HDs

Hi all,

I already have an external (250), but that is getting pretty full. I'm looking to get a 500GB and I'd like to get some recommendations as far as brands go. Also, do you guys recommend buying the enclosure/HD set, or just getting the enclosure and picking up the HD separately?

Thanks

 

in alll honesty they are limited by the cable.....


warranty does and does not matter..........I would pick the company not with what sells most, but what with you are most comfortable with....seek times matter if you want fast but they are still limited by the speed of the motherboard connector

first the warranty, second durabiltity, third the speed

 

And as much as I am a DIY guy, I build my own desktop computers and don't hesitate to cool it with water; I avoid buying a HD and external 3.5" box separately.

Hard disks are one of the few remaining physically moving parts of a modern computer system, and statistically one of the more likely ones to suffer physical failure. In the case of such failure, I can foresee the drive manufacturer blaming the case maker, and vice versa. Especially since external drives cases are by and large generic branded (with questionable power supply quality IMHO). If you bought a namebrand external drive, they would have to stand by their product for any warranty claims (minus user abuse naturally).

 

Warrenty for a seperate HDD is like 5 years usually, vs a premade external of like 2 years.

I disagree with Onyx because there are some very good external enclosures, however even if the enclosure you use did cause failure... how are the hdd makers to know? So I would have no fear of voiding the warrenty.

I am looking to make an external hdd myself and it seems 500gb in a single 3.5" drive is the sweet spot for size/price. Going higher to the 750gb or 1tb size drives causes a huge premium to occure in price thats not worth it to me.

 

Care to name a few brands Vicious? I've swallowed ~130Gb of my 160Gb HD in 12 days of owning this notebook, and I'm on a lookout for more storage myself - with 5 weeks to go before I'm "home".

From my part of the world, ppl hail the Vantec external exclosures as decent, but I'm not sure if they're available in nth america.

 

Seagate is the brand I know of that offers 5 year standard warranties on their external hard drives.

 

I personally am a big fan of Western Digital hard drives. Of all the brands I have ever used they have been very consistantly the best performing, the quietest, and have yet to have one fail on me.

Sometimes the cost of an external prebuilt is nearly the same as building one yourself so the main reward of saving money by building your own is a thing of the past. However still it can be abit cheaper depending, also it can be more "custom"

Black Friday is just around the corner, that will be a great day if you can deal with the chaos to get a hdd, be it internal or external.

For those who like to play it safe and shop online to avoid the masses, if I personally was to build my own right now I would go to newegg.com and use these parts:

usb 2.0 + esata cooler master: 40$ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171019

500gb WD sata hdd 109$ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073

So 150$ for the whole package.

I could go much cheaper, as low as 20$ for the enclosure and 100$ for the HDD but that would mean going with only USB as the interface and IDE for the HDD type. I have esata on my notebook so thats what I want to use, also that cooler master is a tried and true unit with several reviews.


I think infact this is where you can save your money with building it yourself. When you need to go high end with connections like fire wire, or esata. With the prebuilt external drives, the price is purly driven by the connections it offers, the ones with esata are very expensive vs the ones with only USB. However in the external enclosures its only like 10$ more for esata (and esata is really big on external enclosures, over 4 pages worth of them on newegg)

This will be the matching prebuilt: 500gb Mybook for 170$ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136082

So its up to you if you want to save 20$ or not

 

Well, it depends.

If you want fast transfer speeds, I'd suggest an enclosure with a specific harddrive (I've had good experience with Western Digital and Seagate, both are great). You can build a nice one for under $200.

If you want reliable storage, I suggest a USB interface prebuilt one from Seagate. They are cheap, simple, reliable. They have sizes from 320gb to 750gb I believe (not sure).



Good luck. If you want fast transfer speeds, consider the eSATA interface. You'll need a card if you have a laptop, but it can be worth it.

 

I recommend buying an enclosure+HDD.

Heat is bad for HDDs. The problem with ensembles is that the enclosure is either made out of plastic, or does not have a fan. By choosing your own seperate enclosure, you can get something that has both.
I recomend Apricorn enclosures. Very well built, made out of aluminium, and it has a giant 80mm fan.
Another plus point of assembling it yourslef is the 5 year warranty of seperate HDDs vs 2 years of ensemble HDDs.

At zzf:
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=103007
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817155601

The official external enclosure thread:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=28&threadid=496281

 

totally ridiculous.

buying a prebuilt unit is a waste of money.

 

Have you though of where you are going to backup your new 500GB drive?

 

ViciousXUSMC just illustrated with numbers that it's not necessarily so. Cost can be near equivalent. The DIY vs pre-built debate is based on other factors besides cost.

 

They are very close in cost, and usually when there is a big sale the prebuilts can be cheaper, however a DIY setup is more custom and can have a longer warranty or be faster depending.