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(Internal HD + Enclosure) OR External HD?

L

LR6

Member
I am looking for a quick & easy backup solution for my PC and I would like to go with an external hard drive. Should I get a internal hard drive and install it in a USB2 enclosure or should I just go the easy route and get a External Hard Drive? I am looking for about 160GB of storage.

I am reading that the Seagate drives are probally the most reliable right now is this correct? Reliability is my largest priority.

If enclosure can someone reccomend one that works well?

thanks
 
Well, aside from the software bundle, external hard drives are essentially regular internal IDE drives elcosed in a IDE-to-USB box. I have a WD drive with a Vantec NexStar2 enclosure, and it works perfect.

Check the prices, and if getting a retail 160GB external hard drive is cheaper than getting an enclosure AND a hdd, go for it.

BTW, an enclosure such as the Vantec goes for about $30, and a 160GB Seagate hdd for about $100. A retail, 160GB external hard drive from Seagate is about $200. Do the math.
 
For just one drive, I say go for the external hard drive. If you want it to be expandable, then get the internal drive plus an enclosure. In the future, adding another hard drive just means getting another tray for the enclosure.

I am currently using one drive in this mobile rack, and I have two more drives on the way; they will go into these trays.

As I understand it, SATA is hot swappable, though you'll want to disable the write cache on the controller then - if anything's in the write buffer when the drive loses power, you might get serious data corruption. Disabling the write buffer eliminates that problem, but it does also decrease performance.
 
I'd say that the internal HDD + enclosure is a better deal. I was thinking the same thing as you and grabbed a 60GB hard drive and USB2.0 enclosure for backups. Works great 🙂
 
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