External hard drives

[Andvari]

I'm about to buy an external hard drive. I was wondering if there are any specs or features I should look for, and I'm undecided on brand.

As far as internal hard drives go, I've been under the impression that Western Digital and Seagate are the two big guys, and I would assume if they make good internals that they would make good externals. But it doesn't seem that many people are buying Seagate externals from newegg, based on reviews. Instead, Fantom Drives seems to be seeing a lot of succes and I've never even heard of that brand. Are they any good? Maybe they make good external HDs? Any suggestions regarding them?

EDIT: Also, I'm mainly interested in using it for storage and backup purposes. So I'm looking for longevity.

 

[Pens1566]

Buy an enclosure and a separate drive. Cheaper, and you can pick the drive you want.

 

[essasin]

Originally posted by: Pens1566
Buy an enclosure and a separate drive. Cheaper, and you can pick the drive you want.

I did some research a while back and look for the Cypress Chipset.

 

[stardrek]

Firewire would be better then USB if you have firewire on your system.

 

[Koharski]

if speed is important get an ESATA and a card for your computer.

 

[Andvari]

What advantage does the Cypress Chipset offer? And I'm looking at eSATA right now, but won't the write speed be limited by the read speed of my non-sata main drive? Unless I'm writing new stuff to the external, I'm mostly going to be copying stuff from my main drive to it.

 

[Andvari]

bump?