External IDE Hard Drive Enclosure

[smoaky]

I just purchased a thinkpad z61m from lenovo for college. The laptop only comes with a 80GB drive, so I'm looking to purchase either an external hard drive, or preferably it seems in terms of price, a USB/Firewire Enclosure along with a large IDE Hard Drive. This seems to be the most popular on newegg. My thinkpad comes with firewire, so I'd like to utilize that.

I'd like to pair it with a 300GB IDE drive, but I've heard those tend to run hot -. The enclosure I linked to has a fan, but I'm not sure how that compares to a fan in a desktop. If I purchase a large IDE drive, would I risk burning the drive, or screwing up the fan? Anyone purchased a better enclosure w/ firewire?

Also, I'm thinking of getting a good, cheap ata100 w/ 8mb cache since this will be connected via firewire and only used to play/retrieve mp3s and video for the most part. Is there any point in getting a ide ata133?

Thanks.

 

[WackyDan]

Make sure you upgrade the Rescue and Recovery app to ver 3.1. It's their free image based backup utility, and it's very sweet. You can set it to automatically backup to the exteranl drive when it's attached, dailey, weekly, etc.... Will save your butt if you lose the drive on the ThinkPad. Default is to backup local to laptop drive(good for image based issues like malware, viruses), and redundant automatically to USB/network just in case.

 

[corkyg]

Good ideas here. I upgraded my laptop HDD to Seagate's new 160 GB (PerpRec). Then I got another, and put it in an extrenal Firewire 2.5 case, and I periodically use Acronis TI 9 to clone the internal 160 to the external. Periodically I switch them to make sure they work and boot. Never a problem there.

And I took the old 100 GB drive generated by the upgrade, and put it in another external Firewire case, and that has become my main archive for digital photography on the road and at home.

As you may know, most internal laptop drives are placed in caddies or adapter trays of some sort. I managed to get an extra one of those - and I put the cloned duplicate drive in the spare caddy. When I go on a long trip, should I ever have a hard drive problem, a new one, ready to go is only two screws and a lift away.

 

[Old Hippie]

I managed to get an extra one of those - and I put the cloned duplicate drive in the spare caddy.

I have the same set-up. It's also good for trying dubious programs and operating systems. Great minds think alike?