External HD for laptop

Pet

I'm looking to buy an external HDD, mainly to backup all my music/pictures etc. I have a few questions though, cos I haven't done any PC shopping in years (so out of the loop..):

1)Does the rotational speed matter much? The data transfer limit for USB2 is ~480mb/s, so is it worth paying extra for a 7200rpm hard drive - ie, will the USB bottleneck the hard drive speed?

2)Would it be much cheaper to buy an internal hard drive and place it in a caddy (I don't really need/want those "one-touch backup" features anyway)? How difficult (software/hardware-wise) is this to set up?

3)Is the buffer important?

4)Is the brand important?

irlrobins

The bigger the buffer the better. Same for RPM. And brand name does matter. Some are better than others. Personally, I stay clear of Maxtor drives, I've had a few failures with them. Western Digital are well regarded.

I'd go for the caddy and harddrive approach over a prebuilt one. Gives you more options on what size hard drive to go for etc. Might also work out cheaper.

If your laptop has fireware port get a firewire caddy. Quicker than USB for transfer speeds.

MunsterCycling

2nd the Firewire and Caddy & HD seperates of irlrobins, gives much more choice and cost effective.

MC

Pet

Okay, thanks for that. When it comes to buying a caddy, what should I look for? And what kind of HDD interface is best, IDE/S-ATA/etc?

irlrobins

You'll prob find it easier to get and IDE caddy than a SATA one. Bigger range. Since you primarily want to used it as a backup HD, IDE will be fine for what you need.

Ruu_Old

USB 2.0 external hard drives are always an option, I have 3 I have a Western Digital one, its 120gb and I think it was $80 (around that) works great for backup.

IDM

I've had several external hard-drives in my time and actually found those with firewire to be more problematic.

So if I were you, stick to USB2.
Go ahead & make your own external by buying a case + internal drive and you're likely to save a decent bit of money.
Installation obviously depends on the case you buy but in my experience is VERY simple.

KamiKazi

this is the one i went for
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10694
id recommend it to anyone

300GB, 7200RPM, USB 2.0

and it looks like a brick of lego, how cool is that!!!!
there even stackable ffs!!!

Anti

i got myself 2x320gb toshiba external hdds from pc world at xmas, for 169.99€ each. both have been fab. are usb2 but not networked ans require a ac adapter. one downside, their proper noisy when spinning up or reading/writing

only 7200rpm but still

Pet

Does this look like a good enclosure? I wanted one with both firewire and USB-2, and SATA compatible.

I'm probably going to get this hard drive to use with it.

Based on a USB/Firewire connection, is the difference between an IDE and an SATA hard drive any way noticeable?

MunsterCycling

Your kidding: Did you see the cost of the p&p they're trying to charge? That must be the ugliest caddy I've ever seen. MC

Amalgam

Pet, there's this:

http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=318905 125 euros. USB2

itdirect.ie and the new PC shop on Bachelors Walk (5meters from O'Connell Bridge) have it for roughly the same price.

I go along with irlrobins, I find WD run cooler than Maxtor. I've used external Maxtor HD's with the alu shells, red hot.