Thinking of getting an external hard drive

**ZombieFriedNuts** · 11-30-2006, 18:39

I’m thinking of getting an external hard-drive anybody got any advice on them

**Geezer57** · 11-30-2006, 20:25

I like the "roll your own" approach: buy a good quality enclosure with the features you want, get the brand/model hard drive you like, and put them together yourself. You don't always know what you're getting when you buy the big-brand externals, and their warranties typically aren't as long for the externals as for retail internal drives.

My first external was a USB2.0/Firewire Maxtor 160 gig, which cost a small fortune at the time. Later I built a 300 gig Western Digital drive into an enclosure from NewEgg (aluminum case for the heat dissipation, small quiet fan for insurance) for about half the money.

Lately I've been looking into eSATA adapter brackets and enclosures. The adapters are dirt cheap (they connect to spare SATA headers on your motherboard), and the eSATA enclosures allow full-speed transfers (compared to much slower for USB2.0 or Firewire) - just like your internal drives. Some boxes are available with both eSATA and USB2.0 connections, so far I haven't found any with both those and Firewire yet. Maybe some day?

**ZombieFriedNuts** · 11-30-2006, 22:39

That’s a good Idea I never thought of that

**ZombieFriedNuts** · 12-02-2006, 14:42

Ok I kind of got the idea but how am I going to power the fan and hard drive im not going to have to lug a power cable around as well am I.
Also what size case did you put yours in cus I cant really find one small enough
Thanks for the great idea again

**Geezer57** · 12-02-2006, 17:01

Just about every 3.5 inch external drive enclosure I've used or heard about had an accessory power brick that required a wall outlet plug. If your intended use is with a laptop, and you need to use it in "mobile" mode, then you'll have to step down to drives with the 2.5 inch or 1.8 inch form factor. Many of them can be powered from the USB port, and a few offer built-in batteries (ex: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16822101034), but don't expect especially terrific battery life. Keep in mind that these smaller form factors don't offer anywhere near the same capacity or performance - that's sacrificed for portability.
Of the selection currently available at NewEgg (yes, I know they don't ship to the U.K.), this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817392009) seems to be the best enclosure with both USB2.0 and eSATA for mobile use. With eSATA, it needs to either have an external power brick (not included) or have the USB cable hooked up (for power only). With USB hooked up, it draws power from that port.
Looks like capacities in the 2.5 inch drives peak at 160 gigs, with offerings from Seagate, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Toshiba. Seagate offers both 5400 and 7200 rpm models, with the faster version having 16mb cache (at a higher price, I'm sure). Links here: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/mark...tus_7200_2.pdf
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/mark...s_5400_fde.pdf

**Xiahou** · 12-02-2006, 18:34

The trade-off you're probably going to have to consider is capacity vs portability. You can get large capacity external drives for a reasonable price, but you're going to get stuck with a separate power supply to drag around with you. OTOH, for a comparable price, you can find smaller (in size and capacity) drives for a similar price that require no extra power supply.

For my part, I have one of each. A large capacity(250GB) drive that I mainly use for backups at home and a smaller(100GB) USB-powered one that I keep work-related files on to take with me to sites.