[DMBand0026]

As some of you may have already read, I'm getting an external HDD, but I'm buying the components separately.

I've narrowed it down to a few things.

A 160 gig Maxtor from Outpost.com
Link

Or a 120 gig Samsung from newegg.com
Link

Edit: In spite of the Maxtor being cheaper for more space, I'm leaning toward the Samsung as it has a 3 year warranty as opposed to the Maxtor's 1 year. That, and the Samsung seems to be quieter, which I'd like, but I don't need.

My enclosure is going to be from newegg, it's a CoolMax FireWire enclosure with no fan that supports up to ATA/133 drives.
Link


Can anyone give me some final advice on the drives? They are both good deals, but I just don't keep up on my HDD brands. So if anyone could point me in the right direction, that would be wonderful. Thanks

[ast3r3x]

160GB Drive cheaper

How do you know one is quieter then the other?

I've never had a HD fail...well my brothers did, but he abused it, so I don't know which caused it. Warrantees are hard to judge with HD's. It's not like other thing where if it lasts a year it'll last a lifetime.

[Luca]

Neither.

160 GB Seagate from NewEgg, $100: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...148-025&depa=1

200 GB Seagate from NewEgg, $120: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...148-032&depa=1

Seagate is the quietest brand and they carry a FIVE YEAR warranty now. I'm not quite sure how you were able to find such high prices for hard drives, but the ones I'm linking to are great deals. 200 GB hard drives are currently the best value in terms of dollars per GB.

[DMBand0026]

I wasn't sure if I could go the 200 gig route for a number of reasons. One, I don't need that much, but I guess if I had it, I could make good use of it. Two, newegg says that the enclosure only supports up to 200 gig HDDs, and this is a review from newegg regarding the enclosure:

Surf,5/12/2003 5:39:06 PM www.coolmaxusa.com Well i bought it cuz it supported 200 gigs. I bought a maxtor 200 gig diamond max from newegg for $219, and tried to use that in the firewire external drive. It would not work, nothing would show up on my PC. I tried support for Hp, cuz that is my pc. And cannot get it to work. Not really happy. But maybe I might need drivers to pick it up. The company coolmax does not offer drivers for xp on firewire external drives. So what should I do. I guess return the external kit to newegg, or wait for coolmax to reply to my email.

The manufacture's website claims that the enclosure in question will support up to 300 gigs. I gotta say, that 200 gig looks like the way to go, I just don't know if the enclosure will support it.

Thanks for the quick replies guys

Edit: The fact that the Seagate HDD is only ATA/100 and not ATA/133 won't effect my speed, will it?

[ast3r3x]

200GB Segate...saves $9...not as impressive as before

[LoCash]

Not sure if you need that much drive space? Come on man, the cardinal rule is buy as much as you can afford. You'll fill it up, we always do.

[DMBand0026]

Yeah, you're right. I just want to make sure that the enclosure will be able to handle the 200 gig drive, and that ATA/100 isn't too slow. I'm ready to pull the trigger, I just need to figure that stuff out.

[Luca]

ATA/100 doesn't matter - even the Western Digital Raptor, which spins at 10,000 RPM, can only transfer data at around 70 MB/s. You might want a faster interface if you're going to be doubling up your drives on a single bus, but ATA/100 is more than enough for a single drive.

Besides, Firewire can only transfer at 50 MB/s anyway, peak. So reasonably, a FW400 enclosure needs nothing more than ATA/66.

If the enclosure doesn't work with a 200 GB drive, it probably wouldn't work right with any drive. The issue of whether an enclosure will support a large drive really only comes into play with the 137 GB limit, but any enclosure made in the last two years should support large drives. Like Apple with their maximum supported RAM, the companies that make enclosures only support the largest drive available at the time. A year ago, every Firewire enclosure said it supported drives up to 250 GB. Now they'll say 300 or 400 GB. There's really no difference.