Good external 3.5" HD

I'm thinking of getting a large 1TB or 2TB external hard drive to store my stuff in. What are some good recommendations? I don't need RAID0 or extra security stuff.

Is it a lot cheaper to buy the hard drive and buy a separate enclosure?

 

Usually, buying a separate drive and enclosure will cost you a little more, however, you'll often get a better warranty than for a pre-built drive (many pre-built drives offer only a year of warranty; separate hard drives often offer 3-5 years of warranty). Additionally, when later HDDs with greater capacity, or possibly speed come out, you can often just slot them into your existing enclosure (assuming they don't change standards on us again). Or, if your HDD turns out to be bad, same thing. You can't always swap drives with a pre-built model; a lot of them end up using proprietary connections to avoid that very thing. If, however, you just want a simple buy, plug, and go, then buying a pre-built external drive is the way to go.

 

also think about esata and usb3.0

 

I would recomend that u look for an e-SATA or USB 3.0 external hard drive... if u don't have any of those connections , u can get an expresscard with e-SATA or USB3.0 slot... for e-SATA i recommend u look for Western Digital My Book... Stay away from seagate drives... If u want to use can enclosure, u might only be able to use USB2.0 or e-SATA... Its ur choice really... i would prefer buying a drive which has already been "made" rather than "making" it myself.

 

for eSata, I'll have to get a expresscard/cardbus. Does my Thinkpad have an ExpressCard or CardBus? If so, which is faster?

 

We're testing the new drive, that's unreleased by the way on it's own, in the Western Digital MyBook 3.0.

Anyway, it's the fastest external drive that comes all nice and bundled up for you that we've seen. 1TB, 64MB cache, USB 3.0.

 

it should have expresscard... cardbus is so old and ur laptop is only 1-2 years old... whether its the 34 or 54 expresscard size , i don't know.

 

It's actually possibly both, I think. The specs for the T61p list both a Type II Cardbus, as well as a slot with either an Expresscard/54 or a SmartCard reader. Take a look at the slot on your left side; it should be high enough for 2 cards, the bottom one being the Cardbus slot, while the upper one being either the SmartCard or Expresscard slot. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to determine which is which beyond you diving into your system hardware tabs. As for which is faster? If nothing else is sharing the Cardbus slot bandwidth, Cardbus would be faster than an Expresscard going through USB... but if the Expresscard goes through the PCI-E, it'll be faster.

 

Isn't the connector for the ExpressCard/54 and 34 the same size?

 

The connector is, yes, but you often have to be careful putting an Expresscard/34 in a Expresscard/54 slot due to the extra space. An Expresscard/54 looks like this (silly ASCII art ahead!):


-------------------
|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXE
|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXE
|XXXXXXXXXXXX------
|XXXXXXXXXXXX|
|XXXXXXXXXXXX|
-------------

While an Expresscard/34 looks more like this:


------------------
|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXE
|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXE
------------------

The "E" 's are the connector portion.

Thus, when you slide the long slim Expresscard/34 into the big Expresscard/54 slot, you have this extra space "below" the portion of the card... so if you should happen to bump the Expresscard/34, there's a chance you might knock it out of the socket.

 

^ lol @ ascii drawing. here i have a better image



Expresscard 34 (34mm wide) is slightly smaller and fits into the 54 slot (54mm wide)

 

^ Yes, those are much better. I'm just too used to my old usenet habits sometimes... >.>