Better to go with a large usb external or get a enclsoure?

[yoda313]

Ok I'm still on the fence about getting a larger harddrive for my wd tv media player. I currently have a 320gb harddrive (fully enclosed one piece deal from western digital). I am not quite at full capacity yet but when I do some more hd-dvd conversions at 8gbs a pop it will start to get crowded.

I have been tempted by getting a 1tb usb harddrive (the full integrated type) for just over a 100 (they've been going for about 115 it seems).

However is it more economical to get a usb enclosure to except sata drives and buy a cheaper and larger internal sata to fit inside? What kind of cooling would I look into? Are they all active cooling with internal fans? That would be a must since I'd have it inside a cabinet - though the door would be open while in use.

Also is it worth an extra 40 or 50 bucks to get an enclosure and then spend maybe 80 on the same capacity drive when it might be cheaper to get a fixed one piece unit for just over a hundred? I honestly haven't looked at sata internal prices lately so I don't know if there would be any savings going the external enclosure route versus a fully enclosed all in one.

Thoughts?

By the way I'm not quite ready to spring for this yet. So I'm not in urgent need for this. I'm just looking for reasons to go with an external enclosure versus an one-piece unit. I know expandability is a great feature but I'm not sure its worth the extra upfront money - and if its more bulky than a standalone usb drive that might not work well in my cabinet space...

[nic2k4]

There is no difference between the two. That terabyte usb drive is just a standard HDD in a usb enclosure, same for your 320GB in the WD player. You could open either and replace the drive with the anything you like, the only limitation is whether the usb enclosure supports 48bit LBA for larger drives.

The advantage of a separate enclosure is you get to choose the enclosure features and which drive goes in it. Most of the cheap usb drives use samsung or fuji drives, not that there's anything wrong with them, but I'd prefer to use a Seagate or WD drive.

You would do best to get a sata enclosure for future upgrade and sata drives are cheaper than IDE.

[budz]

Whatever you decide on get the WD Black Internal SATA hard drives. Seagate has had some quality control issues lately and it's also known that their free agent drives have problems as well. The power cord on the free agent drives sometimes doesn't allow the external drive to show up on your pc. I had this problem when I transferred some data for a friend. I did a search on google and found there were many others with the same problem. Get a External enclosure with a built in fan with it.

[redwudz]

I have two dead Seagate 320GB SATA drives on my workbench at present. They both died within weeks of each other and were less than a year old. One burned out it's voltage regulator and on the second the spindle bearings went out. I suspect they were made at the same facility as I bought them at the same time. I will RMA them when I see if I can recovery any of the data. Nothing important on them, though.

The WDs that I got for replacements seem a lot heftier, if that means anything and they are both working file.

If you are considering future expansion, you might look into a external case that has two SATA drive slots. That way it would be a easy expansion in the future. I would also recommend a enclosure with a fan. That will be easier to find with a two SATA enclosure.

Any external enclosures I buy now have both USB 2.0 and eSATA, just so I have the options. I pretty much gave up on FireWire external enclosures as I had mixed results. And not all my PCs have a FireWire connector. I don't have a DV camera.

[yoda313]

Thanks. I'll keep these suggestions in mind.