External Hard Drive Questions

1. They're all the same. I recommend getting a cheap drive of your choice from newegg.com and pick up a drive enclosure from them, computergeeks.com, or on eBay. I've used a lot--expensive and cheap--and they are all the same.

2. Type that into Google and you'll get lots of answers. Too long to type. Basically it's an alternative to USB. MUCH faster than USB 1.1 and slightly faster than USB 2. If you don't have USB 2 on your machine, you want a Firewire enclosure for your drive.

3. Yes.

1) I would recommend getting a hitachi 3.5" hdd as they are the leading hard disk manufacturer right now and i've had very bad experiences with maxtor drives and never trusted seagate nor western digital, although many people seem to have no problem using them. And also get the 7200 rpm drives if possible, get the sata version as reliability will be higher. why the higher rpm drives? because it will affect your transfer speed later on.

2) I'm not very familiar with firewire, but technically speaking, firewire is supposed to be slower than usb 2, however, firewires have a constant transfer speed of 400mbps? but anyways their transfer speed is constant. and usb 2 have a maximum of 480mbps transfer rate, but notice it's maximum, not constant. so if your transferring gigabits of datas around then use the firewire. however, firewire enclosures tend to be more expensive, a tad more only.

Where did you find the SATA external drive enclosures?