Lord Chambers
Weaksauce
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2003
- Messages
- 112
I've got two 80 gig SATA drives in RAID 0 right now, and they're approaching their capacity. Plus, it's about right time to reformat, and so I'm looking at getting an external drive to back up my data first.
I've been to the Western Digital, Seagate, and Maxtor sites looking at their products, and also to Pricewatch. My question is, is there anything I should know before going ahead and making a purchase?
I'm thinking 200gbs would be sufficient. My mobo supports USB 2.0, so I figure that's the way to connect, rather than with firewire. 8mb cache would make sense too. 7200RPM seems standard. Am I missing anything important?
The differences between this 200gb Maxtor at Newegg and this from some less reputable dealer brings me to this question: Do I need to have the drive formatted before I get it? Aren't I just going to do that anyway? Or is that just the drill for internal drives, and your average external drive comes ready to use?
I've been to the Western Digital, Seagate, and Maxtor sites looking at their products, and also to Pricewatch. My question is, is there anything I should know before going ahead and making a purchase?
I'm thinking 200gbs would be sufficient. My mobo supports USB 2.0, so I figure that's the way to connect, rather than with firewire. 8mb cache would make sense too. 7200RPM seems standard. Am I missing anything important?
The differences between this 200gb Maxtor at Newegg and this from some less reputable dealer brings me to this question: Do I need to have the drive formatted before I get it? Aren't I just going to do that anyway? Or is that just the drill for internal drives, and your average external drive comes ready to use?