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hard drive enclosure

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kayaker

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like most of you, i've got tons of pictures and video clips of my daughter. while i could buy an external hard drive (and i'll admit that it'd be convenient), buying internal hard drives and also enclosures is much less costly.

anyway, if anyone has some personal experience with this matter, would you post your suggestions for what enclosures you believe are very good and possibly which hard drives you'd recommend?

these pictures and video clips are priceless and having them backed up would give me peace of mind.

thanks for any suggestions you may have!

ps: if you also have suggestions as to where to purchase these items, i'm all ears.
 
If you can find the time, I would also burn whatever you can to discs as another form of backup! Just in case something goes awry with your computer! Or at least Ghost them or use True Image to back up your hard drives! Never can back up enough!
--
Sony DSC-S75, (2)Canon A-1 film cameras), Sony DSC-V3, Sony Alpha 100
 
I now have 3 of these enclosures (Firewire and USB2). I leave 1 of them running all of the time as a daily backup. One I use as a 2nd backup and extra storage. The last one is used as an offsite backup. I bring it home at least once a week to update it. I keep meaning to also backup to DVD, but I haven't done that in a long time. I'm hoping 3 hd backups will keep me covered as its so time consuming using DVD.

Jason
Bob &rsun said:
with no problems. This AMS Venus model has a built in fan and can
be powered by either Firewire or USB. Very well made and highly
recommended.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145657
I'm using the enclosure with a Western Digital 320GB dirve.
Click to expand...
 
First make sure you know what chipset is inside your enclosure. The Prolific brand one are known to be defective and will at some poitn result in loss or damage of your data. These chipsets are almost always found in the cheaper enclosures ie ones under $60 and ones that are bundled with hard drives already inside them.

What you want is an enclosure with a Prolific or Cypress chipset.
 
I have 2 USB and the new one is SATA. Does not get any better, one runs 24/7 at my office. VERY quiet. I have used others that were less expensive only to have to buy into the AMS because the others were leaf blowers.
--
Gary S P



Mother Nature is my religion
http://www.garysworld.net
 
I use to always build my own external drives, but the cost of external drives has come down quite a bit and good enclosures still seem expensive. I have found some good deals recently at Sams club and Costco and Newegg on external drives, so just check first. You can see some Newegg deal here. http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=414

Good luck
E
 
Just check the interface in use. As far as i know eSATA & Firewire is faster than USB. Think eSATA is the fasted out of the lot.
 
i have firewire external drives and USB2, the speed differance is not noticiable even transfering large RAW files. i started this way becouse of a couple HD's laying around, thought why not; it works great.
 
I second the advice on the Vantec enclosure. I have 4 of them and they all work great. One note: Sata does NOT require eSata. Vantec makes a Sata enclosure that can be connected to your pc via either USB or eSata.
 
bruce wagner said:
i have firewire external drives and USB2, the speed differance is
not noticiable even transfering large RAW files. i started this way
becouse of a couple HD's laying around, thought why not; it works
great.
Click to expand...
I have always thought that firewire would be faster than USB even USB2?
 
I think what he meant was that if you want to use the SATA connection you would need an eSATA port on the back of your PC.

Jason
peweg said:
I second the advice on the Vantec enclosure. I have 4 of them and
they all work great. One note: Sata does NOT require eSata. Vantec
makes a Sata enclosure that can be connected to your pc via either
USB or eSata.
Click to expand...
 
Greenville said:
I use to always build my own external drives, but the cost of
external drives has come down quite a bit and good enclosures still
seem expensive. I have found some good deals recently at Sams club
and Costco and Newegg on external drives, so just check first. You
can see some Newegg deal here.
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=414

Good luck
E
Click to expand...
.................

good advice. as i compared the prices of some options, the difference between internal+enclosures was sometimes not much less than an external drive. am still considering my options however

can anyone here tell me what the difference is between these two western digital external hard drives?

they're both 250 gig externals and seem to be identical except one has flashing lights (silly in my opinion but you can turn it off) and one is vertical.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144214

vs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136022

since western digital makes some solid products, i'm pretty sure either choice is fine. just thought i'd find out if there's some significant difference that i'm missing.

thanks!
 
One is USB only
One is USB and Firewire

The USB only one auto powers down when you shut your PC off.
Don't know about the other one.
 
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