Hard drive question

[trooper1]

Hey all!

I've owned a 250GB WD hard drive called elements for about 3 years now. Its basically a hard drive with its own enclosure, but with no fan. It works perfectly and flawlessly even now, and I'm planning to get a 1TB hard drive soon. I was wondering whether I should get an unenclosed hard drive and buy a case with cooling or just buy the 1tb version of the elements or a MyBook, since i'll be using it quite a bit.

Which one is the better option: a mybook or a raw hdd with seperate case?

 

[BongWizard]

there's really no competition here... any internal SATA HDD will easily outperform any FireWire or USB external HDD, even any external HDDs for that matter... the platter configuration and physics involved in an internal HDD allows it to acheive much better speeds than an external... i'd recommend a WD Caviar or Seagate Barracuda internal SATAII HDD (which should both run really cold, my Seagates have never got above 30C)... only downside to an internal is you cant really haul it around with you... just get an internal and stick it in your current case if you've got room, or get an external enclosure if you havent

 

[saltynay]

It won't really matter which you choose seagate/ samsung/ WD are all good notice no maxtor. The deciding factor will be whether you do large and long transfers or short transfers. Heat will build up with prolonged use. Have you considered buying the drive separate and installing it in an external closure which can save you some pennies. If your computers can support it Esata then that would be the fastest option.

there's really no competition here... any internal SATA HDD will easily outperform any FireWire or USB external HDD, even any external HDDs for that matter... the platter configuration and physics involved in an internal HDD allows it to acheive much better speeds than an external... i'd recommend a WD Caviar or Seagate Barracuda internal SATAII HDD (which should both run really cold, my Seagates have never got above 30C)... only downside to an internal is you cant really haul it around with you... just get an internal and stick it in your current case if you've got room, or get an external enclosure if you havent

Thats complete rubbish the drives used in the mybook are the same as western digitals internal range the speed limitation is not the hdd but the transfer method e.g. firewire/ usb and esata is virtually the same as internal speeds It knocks off 1-5mb/sec depending on various factors. Th Op is stating he wants an external....

 

[BongWizard]

Thats complete rubbish the drives used in the mybook are the same as western digitals internal range the speed limitation is not the hdd but the transfer method e.g. firewire/ usb and esata is virtually the same as internal speeds It knocks off 1-5mb/sec depending on various factors. Th Op is stating he wants an external....

actually, you'll find that the average read speed of a WD MyBook connected via eSATA is about 64.3MB/s, whereas one will achieve an average read speed of about 90MB/s with a WD Caviar Blue HDD. USB and FireWire will limit the speed to about 30MB/s effectively, but once that interface limit is removed, we can see that the HDD itself is physically limited... either way i would recommend either

Newegg.com - Western Digital My Book Home WDH1CS10000N 1TB USB 2.0 / IEEE 1394a / eSATA External Hard Drive - External Hard Drives _> for convenience and affordability

or

2x Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives
in a Newegg.com - AMS DS-2131SSBK Steel / Aluminum 3.5" SATA 3-IN-2 SATA Module - External Enclosures -> for sick performance