Price vs Performance/Reliability: External or Internal w/ Enclosure

I'm looking to join the 1TB club in the next few weeks and I'm wondering what's my better option: getting a 7200RPM Caviar Black or something similar and sticking it in a USB2.0 or FireWire enclosure, or just getting a "pre-made" external? Price is probably the main deciding factor, but performance, reliability, and warranty are also important.

I don't have too much experience with pre-made external drives, but I've always gone the internal HD + enclosure route. Reason being is that last time I checked, companies usually used their older discontinued drives in their pre-made externals, so you weren't getting the latest technology (could've changed now though), plus I have always found it cheaper putting together a Hard Drive and an enclosure. It gives me the opportunity to choose a case I find aesthetically pleasing, along with one that has the cooling, outputs and features that I need, as well as choosing a Hard Drive that would suit my needs (ie, warranty, size, sound and performance).

The thing is though, with a USB 2 speed of 480 Mb/s (60MB/s) you won't be using your Hard Drive's full potential. For that, your best bet would be going the eSATA route. If eSATA isn't an option for you, then I wouldn't be paying the premium for a WD Black for it's speed alone, as a seagate 7200.11 (5 year warranty) or even the Caviar Blue or Green would do just fine.

I actually just picked up a 500GB seagate 7200.11 + a Vantec NexStar 3 enclosure for less than 100$ (Canadian) and I couldn't be happier with it. Compared to my older 160GB in the same enclosure, this thing is pretty much dead silent.


- Raven

eSATA isn't an option for me because I'm on a laptop. FireWire would be the fastest option for me, but the cheapest enclosure on Newegg right now that's SATA, 3.5", and FW is like $40, which is kinda steep...

How much are you willing to spend then?

I've gone through google searching for enclosure reviews comparing the differences between Firewire and USB, and they can be pretty much neck and neck, depending on the enclosure (with firewire slightly coming up ahead with 3 to 4 MB/s faster speeds). Since their theoretical bandwidths are very close to each other (firewire 400Mb/s, USB2.0 480Mb/s), this isn't surprising at all. Since 40$ is a bit steep for you for an enclosure, I would recommend going with a USB 2.0 instead. This should save you up to 15$. Also, seeing that the Caviar Black is going for 130$ at newegg, you can also save yourself some more money by picking up a Seagate for 110. So in total, with a USB2.0 vantec nexstar 3, you would be paying 135$ for a custom built external HD. This will ensure that you will be getting an aluminum external case and a brand new Hard Drive with 5 years of warranty to back it up.

Now, would I say that this is worth getting over a prebuilt external? It all depends on your budget and the external that you are looking at.

A few things you will have to look at are build quality of the external case (plastic vs aluminum) which should tell you how well it will dissipate heat, and the type of Hard Drive used inside (warranty, speed, cache size, etc). Your best bet would be to find a few prebuilt enclosures in your price range and google them to get some benchmarks. This should tell you if they are worth getting or not.

Do some google-ing though, as I don't know too much about the different enclosures available today and which might be the best bang for the buck in terms of speed/noise/heat dissipation.

I'll toss the Antec MX-1 into the ring. Its USB/ESATA so it will be a bit slower than firewire but it looks good, is actively cooled but pretty much silent. I can't hear mine over ambient noise. You can usually get it for ~$30 on amazon.