Question about external USB hard drives...

[harrkev]

Hi. I am currently putting together the specs for my new system, but I need some backup storage.

My plan is to get an external USB or Firewire hard drive to do weekly backups, but I now have a simple question.

External hard drives available at retail outlets are usually over $150 for 120MB. For far less than this, I could get a retail 120MB parallel hard drive (around $60 or so after rebate, local retail), and get a USB drive enclosure ( under $40 from NewEgg). So the "pre-made" alternative is more expensive, so the obvious choice is to build my own. Am I missing somehting here? Is there any reason to buy a complete external drive retail rather than pieces? Is there a huge problem in reliability or drivers?

Thanks in advance.

 

[dcheng]

I've never had a problem with a DIY external drive, but I've also never bought a pre-made external drive, so I can't compare the two. I've had several external drives using both firewire and USB 2.0, and they have worked flawlessly. AFAIK, the drives used in the pre-made externals are the same as the internal version you can buy or pull from your machine. I don't think there are any differences (i.e., same model numbers are reported using various drive ID tools).

 

[Rotax]

well, at least w/ maxtor drives some things that come w/ the external drive is the software for doing the backups n what not...and also the "one touch" drives have a button on the drive to do the backup . . . pretty simple . . . but really, for me, it'd be just as easy to dbl click a script on the desktop, so <shrug>