[derekrules]

Hi im new to the forums and just looking for some advice here.

i'm wanting to get an external hard drive to store stuff. Since they're so expensive i've decided to go for a normal 3.5inch hard drive with a enclosure to store it in. that way i could just plug it into my laptop via usb.

i've allready decided on a harddrive-
Hard Drive

now my options are
i could either get this case-
normal enclosure
which would work fine over usb.

or i could get these-
PCMCIA card for laptop
enclosure with ESATA connection
with these i could run that same harddrive via ESATA which apprently has a transfer speed of 1.5GB/s and thats only for an extra £20


do anyone know about this ESATA? i've only just found out about it while doing a bit of research...
and what about this scan.com? i've never heard of them or bought anything from them. just found them doing a google search. anyone know if they are reliable?

and if anyone have any advice or tips feel free to post them :happy:

-Derek

[SirMille]

Scan.co.uk are very big in Ireland and England.

They have a todayonly page which is very popular.
What's ebuyer like? I haven't used them before.

ESATA is supposed to be very good, but I've never used it.

Try and get yourself a external 3.5 inchi drive that support Firewire, USB2, and eSATA, just like this one Komplett.ie - Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500GB USB2.0/Firewire/eSATA

[derekrules]

yeah i've bought a fair few items from ebuyer, reliable and they have really good customer support.

thanks for the link, that komplett site reliable?

as good as that seagate hard drive looks... i'll stick to my method, its more around my price range

[derekrules]

right i've bought the harddrive now, and i've decided to fork out that extra bit of cash to try out this eSATA connection.

the problem is, just as i was about to pay for the enclosure, i find out that it only supports up to 400GB.

i tried a different make and model but still it only supports up to 400GB, is this common in all eSATA hard drive enclosures? or am i just really unlucky?

this was the original one i was going to buy
the alternative which 'again' only supports up to 400GB

so does anyone know of any good enclosures/websites to help me out?


if push comes to shove i guess i could stick with usb2 and get this one
link
i know this one will work with my hard drive as a reviewer has allready tried it.

so... any help at all would be greatly appreciated....

[atomic tofu]

that is odd that a drive enclosure has a capacity limitation...

and on to price...I have my eye on an ESATA drive, 500 gb, 16mb cache...it is about $130 US....not sure if that is expensive for some. There are same size models for 2-3 times that cost...and I am sure they are better in some way or another...but that's a good price

[derekrules]

yeah thats what i thought, not all enclosures lists a capacity limit... i was thinking about just ignoring the limit and see if it works but thats quite a lot of money to be wasteing... (especially since im on a student budget...)

na, thats cheap... cheaper than the ones i've looked at the past few days for a start...


EDIT:
meh screw it... just going to buy the cheap usb enclosure for simplicity...
also i couldnt find any eSATA PCMCIA card for my notebook anyways so the eSATA would be useless.

but im still pritty interested in this eSATA connection so if anyone has any info please reply.
maybe i'll upgrade to eSATA some time in the future, 3GB/s is very tempting.