what's a good affordable external hard drive enclosure? (3.5)

[tami]

i'd like to get an external harddrive, and it looks more affordable if i choose to build one rather than to purchase one. my question is: what is a good external enclosure, and is it realistically better to do so this way (instead of getting a WD or maxtor external harddrive?)

thanks!

 

[jjsbasmt]

I would suggest that if you have a spare HD lying around that you want to use, then by all means get an enclosure. I've built 2 devices like that and saved money. I used the ADS USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure. The Box is rather large and clunky, cost me $59 on sale at Circuit City, but has good cooling, and an on/off switch and I put a spare 120 GB Maxtor in it. This past summer I purchased a Maxtor 80 GB External HD on sale for $80 and promptly replaced the drive in it with a 250 DiamondMX w/16mb cache for about $120. This device has no switch, is smaller and has a really unique set of metal baffles in it for heat dissipation. As I look in this Sundays ads, it would appear the the price of the externals has come down as have the internals. Price seems to be close between home built and store bought external drives. Almost a toss up now on the prices. Info: I was at CompUSA today, and they have several models of enclosures to choose from starting at about $29.

 

[tami]

hmm... yeah, the prices are getting close, so i'm not sure if it's even worth it. i'm still shopping around.

i have yet to find a real great hot deal on this, and i'm considering getting one from a reseller on pricewatch. who knows. all i really need the drive for is for backups; my 80, sadly, was not enough and filled up within about a month

 

[jjsbasmt]

In todays ad CompUSA has a Maxtor 250 GB External for 139.99. I would think that is cheaper than you could build one for if you had to buy a HD and an enclosure.

 

[jjsbasmt]

By the way, this is the one that I use on my main system.

 

[Pabster]

Don't spend over $30 on an external enclosure. You can routinely find $19 ones that are just as good as those $60-$80 units (unless you require FireWire?)

Some of the el-cheapo ones have noisy fans but that can be remedied easily.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I have a Bytecc from newegg that works well, I put in a spare 60GB left over from an old system. But if you don't already have a drive a prebuilt might be better.

 

[SkyBum]

Vantec NexStar 3 was the one I chose, I've seen them online for as low as $30 and for looks they cant be beat. My only gripe was that they dropped the FireWire support in this version.

I'm running a Seagate 300Gb and could not be happier with my purchase.

 

[tami]

i'm not looking for firewire... i don't need anything superfast. USB 2.0 is fine with me.

thanks for the suggestions, guys.

 

[tami]

ok... i went to compusa, got the nice 250gb for $140... also got an internal 250gb 7200rpm 16mb cache for $80 which i may end up using externally in the future. good times

finally i can get a good backup