External Hard drives.... what do you use?

bigbonthabeat · Post by **bigbonthabeat** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:43 pm

Geezus wrote:I get internal WD's placed in an external enclosure. its cheaper, more reliable, and if anything fucks up I can take it out and plug in the internal drive's SATA connection to recover my data.

can you explain on this ? I'm interested in getting another external hard drive because I made the mistake of getting a 5400 rotational speed hard drive : /

If your hard drive crashes, you can get the info back ?

amcnally336 · Post by **amcnally336** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 1:14 pm

Yeah man...THAT is the way to go.
Basically, you buy a SATA drive for a desktop computer...I have WD 750gb caviars...seriously badass and VERY fast. So, then shell out about $35 for an enclosure...I use vantech and they are well regarded, cheap, and work well. You stuf the hard drive into the enclosure and BAMM!!...instant external drive for a fraction of the cost and it is MUCH faster than buying a prepackaged deal...I have tested this extensively using hdtach, a progran that measures hard drive speed!!! But wait! It gets better!! You can buy (for your lappie) an express card/pcmcia card ($60) that allows you to run these drives as ESATA drives (make sure you buy an enclosure that allows this!). Now you will have external drives that will be just as fast ( actually, mine are FASTER) than your internal drive...especially if your internal is not 7200rpm! The card allows you to run 2 drives, so for instance, I now have 2 750gb 7200 WD Caviar ESATA drives that are FASTER than my internal 7200 hitachi!! Anyone who says drive speed does not matter or that there is no big difference in speed is deluding themselves.UseHDTACH and check it out for yourself!!

To the op: yes, you can run a drive off you FF400 IF your firewire is a 6prong type (ie an apple!) Most PCs will not have this, and it will not be ideal. You can look for a drive that is USB driven, but honestly, I would go for one with an external power supply and look for firewire at least!. You will simply get much better perfoemance from this...what is the point of a sweet laptop if you hard drive will bog you down? Especially if you plan on streaming samples.

FrancodeLeon88 · Post by **FrancodeLeon88** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 1:25 pm

amcnally336 -
Thanks for the detailed info. So, the scenario you just explained is NOT bus powered, correct? still only works with wall warts connected to the external drive?

DJ Franco de Leon
www.FRANCODELEON.com

arachnaut · Post by **arachnaut** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 6:45 pm

I build my own external drives now. It is very easy and the warranty for a drive is 5 years. The warranties for pre-assembled drives are 1 year, I think, at least for the ones I had.

I don't think there are many bus-powered drives because the current is limited on these buses and the startup current is very high. I could be wrong, but it's probably good to not use your bus power like that.