External HD vs HD + External Enclosure

rolleggrollrolleggroll Next to a bowl of rice
edited September 2007 in Hardware
Is there a big difference when purchasing an External HD by itself vs an HD + external enclosure? Can someone explain the pro's and con's to both sides please? Which one is better to use when you have to backup files, so I don't lose my important files when formatting and so I don't have to burn 20+ dvd-r's full of data.

I am willing to spend around $100 give or take a little. I am exlcusively buying from newegg.com since there is no good place around my area to buy computer equipment.

Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2007
    There is no pro or con. You achieve the same result either way.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited September 2007
    Thrax, I disagree. Some of the off-brand external drives - drive + enclosure in ready-made kit, use hard drives with obsolete standards, that is only 2-4MB of onboard cache and platter rotational speeds of only 5400RPM. Some of them are real losers with pathetic performance. Additionally, some of the external drive kits are not designed to be upgraded, so the user is stuck with the drive that's included.

    Eggroll, I would recommend getting an external enclosure of your choice and a hard drive of your choice. There are tremendous deals on hard drives these days. You can probably get a high performance hard drive plus and good enclosure for less than the price of a mediocre kit drive of the same storage capacity. If you do get an external enclosure without drive, I would go with a SATA drive. In the future if you wish to upgrade the hard drive in the enclosure, you don't want to be limited to PATA (IDE), which probably may not be available in two or three years.

    If you want the convenience of a ready-made external drive, please get a major manufacturer like Western Digital, Samsung, or Seagate. Those brands will most certainly contain a hard drive with good performance specifications.
  • rolleggrollrolleggroll Next to a bowl of rice
    edited September 2007
    Thank you for that explanation. I will go with a external enclosure + an HD because the thought of being stuck with a PATA drive kinda bothers me.

    Thanks for the advice!
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2007
    You can disagree, Leo, but that was an apples/oranges argument. Comparisons such as these should <i>always</i> be ceteris paribus.
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