External hard drive...

[OREOSpeedwagon]

I had planned on taking my Macbook and my desktop to college this fall, but I'm starting to rethink it and now I'm wondering if I should just take my laptop and get an external hard drive for more storage. What is the best value drive out there right now? I found a 500GB WD MyBook on Newegg that looks decent, $237. I don't necessarily need that much storage, a 250GB one would probably be just fine. However, I'm not getting a job until the second semester so money will be limited, so I'd like to go with somethink pretty inexpensive. Any suggestions?

 

[corkyg]

Do you have any hard drives lying around that you could put in an external case? For your laptop, a spare 2.5" drive would be AOK. That would be your cheapest way to go. Even 250 GB is a lot of storage unless you are doing a lod of high res digital imaging and video work.

I do a lot of high res digital imaging work, and my laptop is my darkroom. I use an external 100 GB 2.5-in drive generated by upgrading the laptop to a 160gb Seagate. It is in an external Firewire/USB 2 case that is easy to carry around when I travel.

 

[VTHodge]

Look through the Hot Deals forum for a cheap one. There are frequently some good deals with rebates. A few months ago, I got a 140 GB for about $80. If you are going to build your own, the enclosures are usually around $30.

 

[Operandi]

Build your own, it's cheaper and easy. The only trick is to make sure you get an enclosure that isn?t crap.

My suggestion... This all Aluminum Firewire/USB 2.0 Mapower enclosure + this Western Digital 250GB IDE drive.