External Hard Drives

[Hatz]

Hey everyone. I am looking to get an external hard drive that I can take with me on the road and what not. Now I see there is 2 ways to go about it........ I can get the premade external hard drives made by Maxtor, WD, and the other companies.

But the more appealing choice is to just buy an external hard drive enclosure and seperate hard drive and save a few bucks.

Is it worth it to save a few dollars? They say its the same thing. One thing I noticed is that alot of the external hard drive enclosures say it "now handles up to 200gb". If I was going to go that route I would prefer to put a 250gb drive in it..........would it not work then? Should I just go with the premade ones that the companies put out. Those go up to 250gb no prob and even 300gb.

If anyone knows about these things I would appreciate some feedback. Thanks for looking.

Hatz

[holistic]

Does your laptop have USB2 / Firewire or both ?(assume you have one, hard to take anything else on the road )

Buy a seperate enclosure then find the drive you want . It will fit.
The 'capacity' of enclosures is a crock of shit. The limitation is in the OS and the IDE interface of the computer. An enclosure is basically a box with a small circuit board inside to control/convert the data.


Some issues :
Alot of enclosures only support ATA100 . (Not a big problem since the data transfer rates of USB2/firewire are not that fast.)
Make sure you buy an IDE drive and not a SATA drive (or better still - the appropiate drive for the enclosure - not seen SATA enclosures yet but am sure they cannnot be far from market)

http://www.cooldrives.com/firen.html

[Hatz]

Actually the external hard drive is for my Desktop. I have a PC in Colorado where I'm at now but I also have one at home in Montana. I would just like to take some of my work home with me. Actually, Alot of programs, and other stuff like that........as well as alot of movie editing files.....which is why I need such a big drive.

Let me understand what these enclosures pretty much are. They are pretty much a box with a circuit board in them. The circuit board just allows the information to be transfered from the ATA100 through the Firewire/USB 2.0 to the computer. Am I correct in this?

Also I do not have USB 2.0 but will probably in the near future. Right now I have Firewire which is just fine for me......so having the option of both is one that I like.

And also you say that the "up to 200GB" is a crock.......thats a relief. So the circuit board thing inside wouldnt go haywire if I had a 250gb in a "200gb" enclosure. As far as I can see, the drives are the same dimensions and plug in the same way. So why wouldnt it work.
By the way, I am running XP Pro on one machine with XP Home on the other. Also, if I wanted to transfer some movies I've edited to a computer with just regular USB......is this possible?

Do I need to get the enclosure with the fan in it........im sure it would help keep it cool.

Thanks for your fast response. I appreciate it.

Hatz

[holistic]

Actually the external hard drive is for my Desktop

O ! Ok then this is a better option : an internal IDE mobile rack.
http://www.colorcase.com/10901.html
I use one and find it a life saver swapping drives in/out.
An option only if you have a free IDE 'channel'.

Also, if I wanted to transfer some movies I've edited to a computer with just regular USB......is this possible?

Possible - YES / Practicle - NO - Too slow.

Your understanding of enclosures is correct. Also most enclosures I have seen come with a small fan.

][

[Hatz]

No free IDE channel

Thats the reason I was wanting an external.......however that removable one looks nice. With my next rig I would probably throw one of those in there.

Another question........kind of off the topic but when I go home soon, I am flying. There is no way in hell I am checking my external hard drive in with the workers........I will bring it as a carry on. Do the X-Ray machines they put that stuff through mess up the drives? Would it ruin it or anything?

Thanks for the responses.

Hatz

[redwudz]

I doubt if airline xray machines would bother a HD, but the airport people would probably hassle you to no end because of your 'bomb like' black box. They like something you can turn on and show them it does something besides blow up.

If you really want a external box, go with a firewire interface. It's not as fast as an internal IDE, but should serve your purposes. I use a 2.5 inch laptop type portable drive, 10G only, with built in USB2 and firewire interfaces. It's very compact and fairly fast. Unfortunatelly, these type of drives don't come in large sizes like you want. It has a silicone rubber casing, that protects it from most jolts.

[rallynavvie]

Airline security devices won't hurt your hard drives. How would laptops ever survive if so?

I've got two different FireWire drives. One I made myself buying the enclosure and then the drive and assembling (it once housed my first Pioneer 104). The other I got from a friend for free since he obtained it from a coworker who couldn't get it to work. It was HFS formatted and as such caused problems with all their PCs and couldn't be formatted properly. I was able to format it and now have a 40GB FireWire drive that can be powered by FireWire as long as you have fully-compatable (as in powered) FireWire like Apple products have. I thought this feature especially cool.

Another thing to consider is getting an enclosure with both FireWire and USB 2.0 connections on it. This will help if you ever use it to transport data to a computer without FireWire (there are still some out there). The price difference isn't too much.

[GbMedusa]

I have a (slightly) related issue. I have an external drive enclosure (Firewire & USB 2.0). I have picked up a few drives for backup, particulary captured video waiting to be (re)authored. I am looking for some suggestions on how I can store the extra drives not currently in use. Right now, I have them in the little antistatic plastic bags in which they were packed. They are just sitting around, on a shelf here, top of a bookcase over there.

If anyone else has multiple drives for their external, I would appreciate your input on storing "storage".

Thanks.

[redwudz]

The way you are storing them is OK. You might look into 'mobile storage racks' similar to these: http://www.computergate.com/products/category.cfm?prodseq=J5
You install one in your USB/Firewire box and buy extra inserts and change drives quickly.

[rallynavvie]

That's certainly a good way to go about it. I wonder how the enclosure's interface will react to a hotswap. You think since it's a FireWire device it'll let you hotswap without the extra hardware/software? Hmm...

Another nice thing about using the enclosure for swapping drives is most enclosures have built-in fans so you don't need to get the more expensive inserts with fans. I would suggest at least getting the nice aluminum ones, they look pretty

[ofbarea]

For info on Utilizing High Capacity ATA-6 Drives in FireWire Enclosures read this: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=184956

The problems mentined there are not present in the newer cases. The safest way to go is geting a firewire 800 case. All of these have ATA 6 support.