external hard drive or internal drive w/external enclosure?

[kyudrew]

I am thinking to buy an external hard drive or an enclosure with internal drive (at least over 400GB). I am still confused which one is the better option.
It looks like many people who prefer external enclosure option think about the cost. It had about 10-30% price advantage. But, others responded back in favor of external drive just like below.

Why this is better than an External Enclosure HD (Western Digital Essential one)
> Turns HD on/off automatically when computer is switched on/off
> Warranty from WD
> The rings on the Case actually indicate how much space in remaining
> Built in google search software
> Much more silent and looks way cooler than an enclosure.

I don't care about extra features (convenience, like #1, #3, and #4). But, I am wondering if good external drives(like WD, Seagate) run cooler and more silent than good quality enclousures. Also, are they look nicer (better) than external enclosures?

In regards to warranty, I think internal drive has advantage because most of internal hard drives have 3 or 5 year warranty, as long as they honor it (they wouldn't know if I am using it as external drive), as compared to only one year warranty of External drives. By the way, why do I need a warranty from enclsure? Would they (connection, chips, etc.) fail/malfunction often?

I need a versatile drive that can connects to my three computers whenever I need to back up the data. But, I don't like to carry power cord (as well as connection cord, USB/Firewire), though. I tried a network drive before (Buffalo Linkstation 160GB), but they are slow (even if I don't much care about the speed). Please advise me which option suits better for my needs.

 

[MrMiyagi]

IMO price is the only advantage for buying your own enclosure and setting it up that way. It seems to me the quality of the enclosures from Segate and WD are much nicer than anything you can buy on newegg.

 

[cleverhandle]

External drives are more of an out-of-the-box solution. Really nothing to configure or assemble, just plug it in and it goes. That's a selling point to non-savvy users, but it seems that you're past that. Other than that, I don't really see much advantage to external drives compared to enclosures. Enclosures are cheap and more importantly, they let you use whatever drive you want. If you decide you want to take that drive out and use it somewhere else, you can. And you can upgrade the capacity easily.

Either way, you have cables to deal with, as you mention. But you can just have multiple sets of cables permanently attached to each machine and tucked away. (My enclosure just uses a standard USB2 cable and a standard PC power cable - I don't know if others use anything more proprietary.) The only way to totally get around cables is either a NAS/fileserver solution, which has it's own set of issues, or to use hotswap SATA racks. Hotswap racks are nice for that, but you need support from the OS and hardware on every machine, which you might not have.

My vote goes to enclosures.

 

[kyudrew]

Thank you for your quick replies.

To be more specific, would external drive run cooler and more silent? I do know it depends which brand/type drive I choose. But, I am wondering if good external enclosure can match same level as external drive, assuming that I use the same drive.

Given my preferences, which brand/model would you recommend (I heard that Apricon, ADS, Vantec, etc are good brand though)? I prefer USB/Firewire combo one. I plan to put 500GB (that's maximum today...would it be okay?).

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: kyudrew
But, I am wondering if good external enclosure can match same level as external drive, assuming that I use the same drive.

I can't see why not - they're really not very different at the hardware level. Just take a look at the pics and specs for the enclosure before you buy - should give an idea of the cooling. Also, do you really need to have the enclosure powered on all the time? Especially if the purpose is backups, I'd rather power down the enclosure and put it away in the closet between backup runs - keep it out of harm's way.

Given my preferences, which brand/model would you recommend (I heard that Apricon, ADS, Vantec, etc are good brand though)? I prefer USB/Firewire combo one. I plan to put 500GB (that's maximum today...would it be okay?).

I purchased my enclosure quite a while back, so I'm not too familiar with the current offerings. Newegg lists the specs for everything, so just check those carefully before you buy and make sure it has the features you want. Quality-wise, I don't think there's all that much difference between brands - they all work off of the same handful of available chips. Just avoid stuff that reeks of bargain-basement and you should be fine. Certainly that should be true if you're using Windows, because that's what everything's tested on. But my cheap, generic enclosure works even on OpenBSD, so I don't think you should have OS issues.

 

[V00D00]

External Hard drive = Internal Drive + Enclosure

The biggest disadvantage is speed, you will be limiting your throughput when you use an enclosure, but you can go with something like firewire800 (1394b) and you will have no performance decrease.

I would suggest an enclosure.

 

[corkyg]

There's another very big reason why many of us use external enclosures with our own hard drives. That makes them continue to be useful after you have upgraded internally. Why have several HDDs sitting on the shelf? For the price of an enclosure or case, they can continue to be useful.

This is especially true of laptop hard drives!