external harddrives - premade or enclosures?

H

hellomcfly

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 2, 2003
Messages
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im looking to set up acouple external hard-drives
- 1tb - drive for home backup
- 320 or 500gb - 2.5 portable drive

and im not sure if i should buy something ready to go out of the box, or would it be better to put the drives together myself with some enclosures.

what brand drives do you guys recommend?
and well made enclosures?

i would prefer the drive to be able to do usb2 and firewire if possible

thanks !
 
The big question you need to answer is whether you need any of the back up software included with prebuilt externals. Otherwise a little price shopping will answer your question for you. I like Seagate and Sammy hard drives but others will recommend Western Digitals.

edit...
I left my initial response above because it was my first knee jerk reaction to what I first thought was a simple question. But then I remembered all of the crappy hard drive enclosures I have purchased in the past. Some would overheat from poor ventilation so the next one would have a fan. Right? Then the fan died early or was noisy from the beginning. I am a hardware guru and would never slump to purchasing a prebuilt computer but with my experience in the past I would might swallow my pride and just buy an external from Seagate or the Maxtor One Touch and be done with it. YMMV
 
You generally will find that the premade drives have OEM version from major manufactures but that they carry a one year warranty versus a 3 or 5 so that may be the deciding factor. If price is more the issue you will probably be able to find a premade that is less then a custom but not by much and it would have to be a deal. The Firewire and USB maybe a deal killer, I do not see to many of those on sale. USB and eSata sure nut not Firewire. Of course that may simple be my bias.

Good luck
 
Ensign.Fodder said:
You generally will find that the premade drives have OEM version from major manufactures but that they carry a one year warranty versus a 3 or 5 so that may be the deciding factor. If price is more the issue you will probably be able to find a premade that is less then a custom but not by much and it would have to be a deal. The Firewire and USB maybe a deal killer, I do not see to many of those on sale. USB and eSata sure nut not Firewire. Of course that may simple be my bias.

Good luck
Click to expand...

Good point on the firewire vs. eSATA.
The Seagate Free Agent drives have a 5 year warranty.
 
For the 1TB drive, I'd definitely make sure it has eSATA.

If I have spare drives layin around, I'll buy enclosures for them. If a relative/friend needs one, I find a FreeAgent or MyBook on sale. Catch my drift? :p

The premades have a tendency to work out of the box. ;)
 
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