external hd
 

I was thinking of getting meself an external harddisk.
Unfortunately I don't know what to get.
What would be best?
Getting a real external hd or making one myself with a harddisk enclosure thingie and an internal hd...

getting an external exclosure gives you the advantage of swapping out the HDD when you want, and upgrading the unit.

all-in-one products are more "streamlined" but the difference is almost none existant.

I had the chance to compare a Maxtor One Touch II versus a much cheaper, but same capacity drive from Medion. Performance was identical.

external enclosure and internal hd then.
Tips on the type/model of enclosure...
Tips on the hd to use

go for exclosure with Firewire support; and SATA HHD connection

HDD usage, 7200RPM 2/8Mb cache SATA

maxtor enclosures are pretty good, they have a full metal body which protects your drive a bit better then plastic. Ofcourse, if you drop your drive when it's spinning, it's dead anyway. They are also heavier (duh) and cost more.

got an icy box here, and have no complains (yet ;) )

jep, usb is fast enough

usb is fast enough, the hd is the bottleneck. Unless you have one of 10.000rpm maybe. :)
Only problem with an external hd that uses usb is that you lose an usb slot for some other external hardware thingie like a mouse or keyboard or ...

but modern computers got at least 6+ usb ports :p

Wireless keyb+mouse: -1 usb port
printer/scanner/copier: -1 usb port
HD: -1 usb port
webcam: -1 usb port
= 2 usb ports left.
... yeah you are right, more than enough but then again: The problem of samoyed was that he got no firewire and since firewire is on modern computers that means he got an old one and the old ones don't have 6+ usb ports