keep current drives or turn them into external usb drives?

[Techno]

Hi,

I have 2 Maxtor 120GB drives in RAID-0. I would like to get another hard drive (external) for backups and i'm not sure if i should go and get 2 new 250GB drives for Raid-0 (sata-ii) and get 2 kits off of newegg to turn my current hard drives into external usb, or should i keep my 2 hard drives and buy either a western digital or maxtor external hard drive????

Thanks!

 

[dionx]

i prefer a factory external drive. if you turn off your computer or don't use the harddrive for a while, the harddrives spin down and possibly sleep. with converted harddrives, they run full speed all the time.

the pros of the harddrive spinning down is that it reduces heat and increases lifespan of the drive. the cons is that there may be a slight delay of 2-3 seconds when accessing the harddrive when its spun down.

the pros of the converted external drive is that its full speed all the time, though there is more burden on heat and lifespan of the drive. you can however turn off the drive with a simple switch, but after awhile, i get tired of shutting down both my computer and harddrives separately.

the factory external drives come with software for automatic or manual backups via software so you may like that, but the one thing i like about my WD drive is its connection options. i prefer firewire over USB 2.0 as its faster and uses less CPU, and some drives even use networking.

 

[ElFenix]

i do like the extra perks you get with a factory built external, but making one yourself with some old drives isn't a bad use for them at all. i do wish windows could make externals sleep.