Hard Drive Recommendations

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kevinzak

Limp Gawd
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Jan 3, 2009
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I recently got an Antec MX-1 external enclosure for ridiculously cheap ($12 from a guy whose home PC I worked on. He had it sitting on the shelf and I asked him if he was using it and if not, if he'd sell it. Told him on sale it's worth about $30, slightly more if no deals or rebates and then less with rebates sometimes. He said $12 and it was mine. Needless to say, I jumped.)

Now I'm not sure what to put in it. I'm thinking about getting a WD 640 Blue or Black for it. I love both of them for internal but has anyone had any experience with sticking them in enclosures?

I'm gonna be connecting with eSATA. Using it as just another layer of backups for my business stuff as well as my media files. I'm looking for a fairly inexpensive solution while not sacrificing much stability. Once I get the server I've been dreaming about built, it will probably go from primarily backups to primarily holding media (movies and music) so I can bring my stuff with me when I travel with my laptop. So portability would be nice, too.

All in all, I have never messed with external drives before so wasn't sure if there was a world of difference between a good internal and a good external.

Thanks in advance for the help.
 
The Samsung HD103UJ 1TB was $95 w/ free shipping (newegg.com) when I picked it up last week. Can't go wrong with that, great drive.

As far as a there being drives that work better/worse in enclosures thats false. SATA drives are SATA drives when it comes to that.
 
criccio said:
The Samsung HD103UJ 1TB was $95 w/ free shipping (newegg.com) when I picked it up last week. Can't go wrong with that, great drive.

As far as a there being drives that work better/worse in enclosures thats false. SATA drives are SATA drives when it comes to that.
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What's speed like on those? Performance isn't really my primary need (as I'd rather sacrifice a little performance if a drive has a good history of not dying right away; granted there's a chance on all drives, but there is obviously quality differences), but I'd still like to have decent speed. I have no experience at all with Samsung drives. I've got an optical Writemaster in my gaming computer but I have never bought a hard drive before. Anyone else recommend this?
 
Its fast, very fast, but you are using eSATA so you will not be utilizing it to its full potential. The bottleneck will the the eSATA.

This specific Samsung is very well received around here and newegg, search for its model number.
 
criccio said:
Its fast, very fast, but you are using eSATA so you will not be utilizing it to its full potential. The bottleneck will the the eSATA.

This specific Samsung is very well received around here and newegg, search for its model number.
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I'm not running an eSATA PCI card. I have a bracket that just plugs directly into an onboard SATA port. If I understand correctly, I will be able to utilize the same amount of bandwidth a normal SATA connection could by doing this.

1TB might be a little bit overkill for me. Right now I have about 300GB of media and 10GB of stuff for my invoices (various backups, invoice PDFs, receipt PDFs, etc.). At the same time it would allow for greater flexibility in the future. Would you recommend the Samsung over a WD 640 Black, then?
 
I would only because I have one. You never can have to much space. :)
 
criccio said:
I would only because I have one. You never can have to much space. :)
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Alright, I appreciate the advice. I will wait for a couple more suggestions before I go ahead and make a purchase, but I will definitely consider the Samsung. Thanks again.
 
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