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Lesson in External Hard Drives
This is a small article on what to look for when buying an external hard drive or assembling one yourself.
If you plan on buying a pre-assembled external hard drive, please consider building your own kit. Its actually quite easy and doing so will save you money and get you a better product.
Trust me there's nothing to it. I can't believe that businesses can gouge
people for merely putting a hard drive into a case... Take a look at the numerical checklist below if you plan to buy
or build an external hard drive. Afterwards, there is a set by step
article on assembling & installing your external hard drive.
# 1: Make sure to get the correct size enclosure case. If you intend to use a 3.5 inch or 5.25 inch hard drive, make sure to get a case that it fits in!
and if you intend to use a "Laptop hard drive" (2.5 inches), make sure you get an enclosure case that will
accommodate it!
# 2: Decide whether you want a case with USB 2.0, Firewire or both. USB 2.0 is the fastest* and is pretty much on it's way to becoming the universal standard.
Don't even consider a USB 1.0 enclosure. It's slow! You might find a case on
Ebay, but find out it's USB 1.0! Don't buy it! Firewire's
(IEEE-1394) speed is comparable
to USB 2.0.
*Transfer speed is highly dependent on how fast your processor/motherboard combination is. If you have a Pentium 4 chip and a newer motherboard, you'll
find transferring/accessing files cruise along just fine.
# 4: Decide whether you want the case to be made of plastic or aluminum. I suggest aluminum because it cools faster.
# 5: Decide if you want the case to have internal fans or no fans at all. I suggest you purchase an enclosure with fans if you intend to run the hard drive for hours or use it for prolonged periods of time. A fan will
surely add to the value and the longevity of your hard drive.
# 6: Decide whether you want to be able to "daisy chain" them. Which mean (either thru an extra firewire or USB 2.0 port) you can add on another external drive (up to 63 of
'em!) Also available are 5 or 6 hard drive cases (more like large cubes)
that you load up a bunch or hard drives into. They are pretty
expensive...but sure are cool.
# 7: Decide whether you want the enclosure to have anti-shock absorbers. It can't hurt especially when it's
traveling through the mail!
# 8: Decide what name brand hard drive you want to buy and how many Gigabytes.
Western Digital is the best hard drive on the market, followed closely by Maxtor.
Because these two companies are in such fierce competition, the market has seen the hard drive sizes soar all the way up to 320 GB.
Of course a 320 GB hard drive is expensive. With a bit of patience and perhaps waiting for a rebate check in the mail, you can pick up a name brand hard drive at a reasonable cost.
For example, I purchased a 160 GB Western Digital HD for $100.
I have found this site (http://www.globalpremier.com) to be very useful,
it has the best prices and the products appear to be high in quality. It seemed everywhere else,
such as "http://www.cooldrives.com," was highly overpriced. Or even on
Ebay, the products were low priced but of low quality...well except for Global
Premier's auctions of course.
I bought my enclosure from Global Premier because I liked the high quality products at the highly affordable price.
All I have to do I slap my hard drive in, install the USB 2.0 software and I was transferring files to it within minutes...
I thought I'd have
nothing to say bad about GP, but they are very slow with shipping. After
they get your check, they send you an e-mail saying they got your check, that
you will receive a tracking number soon and It will arrive in 2 weeks. My
2 weeks came and passed, so I e-mailed them and they said it would ship out
today. What a bunch of phooey that I had to remind them!
How
To Assemble A External Hard Drive
 
Original Website Concept: Scott Bakal. Updated on August
31, 2003 by Ryan Mulberger.
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