External HDD Suggestions/Tips

[EmptyMemory]

Hey, I've never bought an external hard drive before. Now seems like a good time as any as my laptop has run out of space. Any suggestions regarding which one I should buy, how I should take care of it, accessories, purchasing it online/offline, etc?

[datora]

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Buy your own external case and buy the drive(s) you put in it.  You will know your exact components.

Decide if you want USB 2 or USB 3, or maybe eSATA.

How much storage do you want?  How large an external do you want to manage?  What's your budget?

What is your intended, primary use?  Very important question.  Speed?  Large capacity?  Storage?  Torrenting?

For example, if small and speed is of essence, get a Seagate 750 GB SSD/hybrid drive in 2.5" form factor and put it in a USB 3.0 or eSATA 6.0 GB/sec enclosure.

If you just need to put files onto the drive and playback audio/video, a USB 2 is good enough to stream media playback, even though it will be slow to move large amount onto and off of it.

I use an enclosure that holds two drives.  Often I have 2 x 2TB drives in it for massive storage solution.  Other times I swap drives around and (like now) it has a decent performance/reliable 750 GB drive in one of the slots that's used to run torrents.

Really Good Idea to make sure it's located on a UPS to protect your data.  Also, make sure you keep it cool.  The enclosure I rely on for torrenting has a fan built in and it stays icy cold.

Please answer a few questions so we can provide more targeted advice.

» Technology » Need help choosing a UPS (plus general UPS tips)

» Technology » 4 TB external storage solution

[kitamesume]

buy one without an external brick, the advantages would be less hassle and more power efficient since they use 2.5" drives inside them.

find out which capacity has the best price per gb ratio, on my case 1TB drives have the best price per capacity since it goes under 1$ per GB. also decide which brand you trust.

[EmptyMemory]

Wow, thanks for the detail you guys!

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Buy your own external case and buy the drive(s) you put in it.  You will know your exact components.

Decide if you want USB 2 or USB 3, or maybe eSATA.
USB 3, mind you I don't know what eSATA is.
How much storage do you want?  How large an external do you want to manage?  What's your budget?
I was thinking around 4TBish. My budget is around $200. The dimensions for your Rosewill seemed okay.

(click to show/hide)

7.85" x 4.9" x 2.96"

What is your intended, primary use?  Very important question.  Speed?  Large capacity?  Storage?  Torrenting?
Well, I plan to throw a backup of my non-media files on there, and put any anime I'm not seeding on there too.
If I'm watching videos from the HDD, do I need speed? I'd probably like speed though so I can move things to and from my computer.
For example, if small and speed is of essence, get a Seagate 750 GB SSD/hybrid drive in 2.5" form factor and put it in a USB 3.0 or eSATA 6.0 GB/sec enclosure.

If you just need to put files onto the drive and playback audio/video, a USB 2 is good enough to stream media playback, even though it will be slow to move large amount onto and off of it.

I use an enclosure that holds two drives.  Often I have 2 x 2TB drives in it for massive storage solution.  Other times I swap drives around and (like now) it has a decent performance/reliable 750 GB drive in one of the slots that's used to run torrents.

Really Good Idea to make sure it's located on a UPS to protect your data.  Also, make sure you keep it cool.  The enclosure I rely on for torrenting has a fan built in and it stays icy cold.
How does a UPS protect data? Does discontinuing power to a HDD harm it or something?

Please answer a few questions so we can provide more targeted advice.

» Technology » Need help choosing a UPS (plus general UPS tips)

» Technology » 4 TB external storage solution

buy one without an external brick, the advantages would be less hassle and more power efficient since they use 2.5" drives inside them.
What's an external brick? I tried Google-ing it, didn't help.

find out which capacity has the best price per gb ratio, on my case 1TB drives have the best price per capacity since it goes under 1$ per GB. also decide which brand you trust.
I have no familiarity with brands here whatsoever. :s

[FlyinPenguin]

It depends on what you expect out of it. Do you want ultra portability or performance?

I personally prefer ultra portability so I use 2.5" external hard drives. They usually don't require an external power source and are extremely compact. I have two that fit perfectly in the pockets of my laptop case. They lack the the transfer speeds of a 3.5" drive but for media storage they are perfect. Transfer times may initially be somewhat slow but in terms of playback they work perfect. I playback 1080p video from them all the time with no issues. Both of mine are USB 3.0 but I only have 2.0 on my laptop, they still stream perfect though.

I have both a 1TB Western Digital and 1TB Toshiba and both work flawlessly. I haven't had them long enough to comment on reliability.

All total, I have 2.5TB storage for my laptop. Not too shabby

[lapa321]

You'll have to decide if you're in it for speed, portability or storage. It could save you a lot of dough if you only get what you need.

In my case i have several TBs worth of DVD's (I had to put my anime's somewhere). DVD's are cheap, but rummaging through a closet full of pudding cases everytime i needed something was a bit much (tho i do have a DVD tracking software). So i decided on getting a docking station.

Something like this. Minus the extra ports.



Mine's only USB 2.0 which means a transfer speed of 26MBps. It means copying a few hundred gigabytes can take several hours. But for archiving purposes, it's enough.

The dock is about $10, and a 2TB harddrive is a little over $100 (before the flood, it's now $130).

Having the harddrive exposed like that does have risks, i have it at the very back to avoid it getting knocked around. It's also only turned on when i actually need something off it, most of the time it's powered down.

#1 USB 3, mind you I don't know what eSATA is.
#2 I was thinking around 4TBish. My budget is around $200. The dimensions for your Rosewill seemed okay.
#3 If I'm watching videos from the HDD, do I need speed? I'd probably like speed though so I can move things to and from my computer.
#4 How does a UPS protect data? Does discontinuing power to a HDD harm it or something?
#5 What's an external brick? I tried Google-ing it, didn't help.
#6 I have no familiarity with brands here whatsoever. :s

#1 eSata is the Serial connector of your desktops harddrive being treated like a USB port. Essentially, your external harddrive is connected directly to your motherboard just like an internal harddrive. Speed is limited only by your chipset and the external drive. So you could theoretically do 200MBps on eSata if you've got an SSD external drive. Compared to 26MBps for a USB2.0.

You don't actually need it to go that fast tho. I got a WD 2TB Green harddrive, it's not the fastest harddrive, i'm in it for storage capacity and it's cheap. You only need a 10,000 rpm drive for primary software, not archiving.

#2 You can probably go for dual bays if you can find it.

#3 My NAS is pathetically slow (USB1.0) so its transfer speed is stuck at 8-10MBps. But it's still fast enough to playback 1080p no problem. I don't think there's a video out there that's encoded at over 80mbps. Any video that needs over 10MBps would be 13Gigs for a single 22 minute episode. Not even CoalGirls go that high.

#4 Modern harddrives automatically parks the drive head when the power cuts off so there's little fear of damage to the hardware. NTFS protects it on the software side.

It's not the unit suddenly getting turned off that's the problem, it's the quality of the power while it's running that matters. The harddrives in your PC are protectd behind several layers of protection to ensure that nothing surprises the drive heads (It's delicate equipment moving at high speeds in distances measured by the nanoscale). External harddrives aren't guaranteed to have that level of protection. You wouldn't want powerspikes constantly hitting the circuitry.

#5 Do you see the large black rectangle attached to your laptop? You may also refer to it as a 'power transformer' or 'AC-DC converter'. 'Power Brick' is another one of its nicknames.

#6 I suggest you start by looking into "Western Diginal Green 2TB" and start comparing price per MB from there. The 'Green' series are considerably lower performance compared to the high performance 'Black' ones but they're also cheaper.


These are just my thoughts on making do with what's available (We don't have Amazon). Final decision still depends on your needs.

[kitamesume]

buy one without an external brick, the advantages would be less hassle and more power efficient since they use 2.5" drives inside them.
What's an external brick? I tried Google-ing it, didn't help.

find out which capacity has the best price per gb ratio, on my case 1TB drives have the best price per capacity since it goes under 1$ per GB. also decide which brand you trust.
I have no familiarity with brands here whatsoever. :s

external brick, also known as powerbricks, are what you see being plugged on laptops. they're mostly used to power stuffs like external 3.5" harddisks, laptops, ODDs and mini-nettops.

me neither, i just pick whichever has the least price per capacity since im pretty lucky with harddrive durability =o

[datora]

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If you don't know what eSATA is, you don't need it.  USB 3.0 is plenty fast.  If your computer has a USB 3.0 port you'll be able to transfer 10-15 GB in under a minute for practical circumstances, and possibly 20-30 seconds under best conditions.  The spec is for 5 gigabits/second.

5 x 1024 = 5120 Mbits/sec ÷ 8 = 640 MBytes/sec ... so, 6,400 MB/s = 6.25 gigabytes every ten seconds.  Some differences depending on if you are writing to the drive or reading from it, and transferring large single files is far more efficient than thousands of very small files.

NOTE:  you will need a SATA III (6.0 Gbit/sec) drive to make use of your USB 3.0 maximum potential.  A SATA II (3.0 Gbit/sec) drive will not perform at the top USB 3.0 performance levels.


Compare to USB 2.0 which is 480 Mbits/sec (60 MB/s), and it's rare and difficult to come very close to that maximum.  Practically, when I write a 10-12 GB directory of 15 or 24 video files to my external USB 2 drive it takes about 15-18 minutes.  So, if you do that about twice per day, it's really fast enough.  And, USB 2 is more than a dozen times fast enough to play music and video files direct from the external storage to the computer.  Effectively that's a Read operation, which is faster by about 20%-30% than a Write operation.

What will screw you a bit is if you need to do a 1/2 or full terabyte transfer.  Under USB 2.0, start the transfer, go to bed and it's usually done when you wake up.  Under USB 3.0 you can go get a cup of coffee and it'll be done by the time you drink about half of it.  So, decide how often you will make transfers in those size ranges, and try to estimate for the next three to five years that you'll have the drive.


Next, your real factor is budget.  Hard drives got pretty expensive last fall when most of the industry manufacturing got wiped out by flooding in Thailand.  Prices should have dropped around Christmas when most of that got fixed, but some interesting things happened in the industry because of that event.  There has been quite some consolidation, so competition dropped.  The result is that prices are still stupid high ... for no other reason than price gouging. 

» Technology » WD HDD Industry Will Be Supply Constrained Due to Thailand Flooding

It has become better a little, but here's an example:

 - SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0 Gb/s

The standard price was about $80 last August.  Then it went up to about $180 last September.  Now they're "only" $120.  Unfortunately, today is the last day for a $20 discount, where it would "only" be $100.  But, last summer I bought two for $70 each, and even picked one up for $60.  This is an example of a drive that will not perform to top USB 3.0 specification ... but it will still be pretty bloody fast compared to USB 2.0.

Samsung isn't even owned by Samsung anymore ... it's now a division of Seagate.  And Seagate was THE worst hard drive manufacturer for the two to three years prior to last August.  They've become better ... but their reliability and quality control still scare the crap out of me.


All this is the long way of saying that your chances of getting 4 TB storage for under $200 are pretty close to zero at this time.

I still recommend this external enclosure:

 - Rosewill R2-JBOD Aluminum 3.5" USB 2.0 DUAL-BAY

Watch for it on sale and you can get it as low as $30 or $35.  However, it is USB 2.0 ... they never started making it in USB 3.0.  A real shame.  You can run it with only one hard drive in it and then get a second one later to pace your budget.  From the description, it doesn't take drives larger than 2 TB, which could be a con if you're looking at 3 TB drives, for example.

It comes with two essential features, in my mind: it has an internal fan (which can be turned on and off separately) and it has it's own power switch .. which gives me great comfort when trying to isolate my storage drive from unanticipated power on/off events.  Further, the thing is built strong enough to park a car on out of solid aluminum, which only helps to act as a heat sink and dissipate heat.

So, that's a large storage brick.  It's slow, but about as low a price as you'll get away with for the amount of storage.  You can look at other dual-drive enclosures, but they're more expensive and not really any better ... unless you can find one with USB 3.0, and/or support 3 & 4 TB drives for future use.  You could put one 2 TB drive in it immediately and spend about $150-$160 right now.  Shop around and maybe you could do that for ~$130.  A second 2 TB drive will run you $100 to $140 (depending on the model you select) ... so a full 4 TB solution looks like about $250 right now.


An alternate:

 - Rosewill RX-358 U3C SLV Aluminum / Plastic 3.5" Silver USB 3.0 & eSATA

I have a slightly older model of this one that has only USB 3.0 and not an eSATA (which I don't need anyway).  Picked it up for $20 on sale.  Love it.  I haven't used it on a USB 3.0 port yet, but it performs at the bleeding edge of the USB 2.0 specification.  It's also supposed to support 3 TB drives ... so you could consider it as a single-drive external, well-cooled solution.  I run a 750 MB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6.0 Gb/s out of it and it is SOLID.  The 750 MB drives are off the market now, but here is the slightly larger equivalent:

 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s


In my previous post I suggested the following:

 - Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 750GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 6.0Gb/s Hybrid

Currently ~$155, but I've seen them go for ~$135 - $140 on sale.  This is a hell of a performance drive.  Look to this if you REALLY feel the need for speed.  You will want a USB 3.0 enclosure for it, otherwise you're throwing your money away.

If you still want the small form factor + portability of a 2.5" external but the bleeding edge speed of the Momentus is more than you require, look to something like a Western Digital Scorpio Black:

 - Western Digital Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s

A couple things here.  The Black edition is preferable to the Blue edition.  Not for performance, but for reliability.  The same goes for the 3.5" Caviar drives.  There is also a 1 TB version, but watch carefully for the exact dimensions ... the 1 TB drives fit into laptops, but are sometimes too thick to fit into an external case.  Definitely pay attention to that detail.


Final thought:  the forum link in my previous post about battery back-ups & surge protection.  Read it if you wish to understand why that's an important factor.  The electricity coming out of your wall has a lot of fluctuation in it and can play hell on sensitive electronics.  Hard drives, especially magnetic, mechanical ones, are just about as sensitive as they get.  If you care for your data, look at quality surge & battery protection.

There was some more discussion here:

» Technology » Just lost another HD. are docking stations to blame?

Also, that topic gives an idea of why I do not trust docking stations, very especially cheap ones.  They are cheap for a reason: they are missing essential, quality electronics that protect your hard drive.


[ EDIT: added some stuff & fixed some typos ]

[EmptyMemory]

Ah, lame. That's too bad. USB 2.0 it is then.

So, this Rosewill R2-JBOD Aluminum 3.5" USB 2.0 DUAL-BAY sounds good.

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, I shouldn't be going for SATA III (6.0 Gbit/sec) with USB 2.0, so does that mean I should be looking at SATA II?

i.e.: SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0 Gb/s?

If your answer is yes, I think I'm going to suck it up and just get 2TB for now the time being, even though its more expensive than it should be. I'm pretty desperate for space atm, and then I'll keep an eye out for sales where I can pick up my second 2TB HDD to fit in the second slot.

Again, I can't thank you enough for your help datora! I'd be so helpless w/o you, lol.

[datora]

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Yah, correct.  If you get a USB 2.0 enclosure, a SATA III drive will not help you.  A SATA II drive will be just fine.

If you're ready to do it right now AND you're comfortable with USB 2.0 ... then you really want to grab that Samsung F4 Spinpoint Right NAO.  That promotion code will bring the price down to $100, including delivery ... for about another four or six hours, then it goes back up to $120.  That deal might come around again within about six weeks or so ... but you never know.

You take a risk with any large drive.  However, this particular model is about as reliable as any of the "Eco" drives.  I've had three of these in continuous service for over a year.  I took the time to sector-align them and format them very carefully using the free tools available from the Samsung website.

The recommendations for proper surge protection and running off a battery back-up are specifically to greatly increase the safety of your hard drive ... you might be OKay without it.  Many people are.  I've learned some hard lessons over the last 30 years ... so, I try to buy insurance whenever I can afford it.


As far as the enclosure goes ... if you get a USB 3.0 one like I linked to above, you will get much better data throughput using USB 3.0 ports on any computer than you would with a USB 2.0 enclosure ... you just won't be using the USB 3.0 to its maximum potential with a SATA II drive in it.  You don't need it for media playback, but you could always use the enclosure in the future with a different (SATA III) drive, and then get a USB 2.0 enclosure (such as the dual-bay in those links) as a massive, slower back-up solution.

I'm very happy with that Rosewill dual-bay enclosure.  It's on my desktop as I type this, about 18" from my right hand.  I can hear the fan running, just barely, and it's torrenting up a storm like a boss over its USB 2.0 connection at about 650 KB/sec.  It's been doing that 24/7 for most of a year now off a Western Digital Caviar Black 750 MB SATA II drive .. which is designed for that sort of constant access/performance.  The second drive in the enclosure is one of those Samsung F4s, which formatted to 1.8 terabytes usable space ... about 200 GB free right now.

Make sure to check the fan & interior of the enclosure and brush out the dust once every six weeks or so, make sure it doesn't get all clogged up.  Should run cool & reliable for years.

As per that topic on surge protection & UPS ... I have my external drive running off an APC BE750G 750 VA / 450 Watts unit, along with my main computer, to keep it as safe as I can.

So, y'know ... Good Luck with that.  I hope you have at least the satisfaction out of that configuration that I do. 


[ EDIT: I bought a $3, fine camel-hair art paintbrush at an art-supply store, one without a metal crimp, all wood & plastic.  I use this to gently brush dust off my electronics when they get dirty, it's a critical part of my IT toolkit.  That's how I clean off my CPU / cooling blocks, motherboard, drives, etc. when compressed air leaves anything behind. ]

[EmptyMemory]

Thanks so much datora! I'm going to grab it right now. I'm probably going to go with the Samsung F4 and the Rosewill w/ the USB 3.0, just because I can't see myself using up all 2TB within the year.

I was reading what you had to say about the UPS: so I should get it separately at staples or something?

Edit: Fuuuuuuuuuuuck, I'm Canadian so the promo doesn't apply to me, plus shipping is now costing me money. x_x
It's gonna cost me $200 for all of that, should I just wait till Christmas?

[datora]

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Glad that helped out.  Now that you have a better idea of how this works, you can slowly plan and budget and maybe next year upgrade the drive in the USB 3.0 enclosure to a reliable SATA III/3 TB and then get something like the dual-bay enclosure & populate it with this 2 TB plus another.  Hopefully HDD prices will be dropping.  My 6 TB of storage is getting a little tight to manage ... would like to increase that this summer rather than deleting.

I was reading what you had to say about the UPS: so I should get it separately at staples or something?

Yep.  Office Depot, OfficeMax, Tiger Direct/Micro Center, KMart. Target, google search by models you see listed at newegg, etc.  I wouldn't panic about buying it instantly, but shop around for a week or two and see what best price you can get.  You can gamble with very favorable odds for a month if you need to; not trying to make you panic.  Some people never use 'em and are fine.  $90 is a bit steep for my budget.

Also, decide what you will use the UPS for.  If you will only use it for the external drive and maybe one or two other small-load items, no need to get something as big as a 750 VA model; I use that one to protect an entire computing system with some juice left over.  There are 350, 450, 550 & 650 models.  I've a couple 550s that I picked up for $50 (hmm, might have been $39.99 on sale; don't remember at the moment).  I think I've even seen 250 models ... thing is, generally it's tough to find something for under ~$30, so you just get the most electricity you can find in that price range.

I'm pretty loyal to APC, so that's where I'd look hardest first.  In the consumer-level stuff, usually not worth trying to save $5 for something less reputable.

[Freedom Kira]

So uh, just make sure you guys know that even the fastest HDDs can only just exceed SATA I (1.5Gbps) speeds... Which means that, while USB 2.0 (480Mbps) can still be saturated, you're probably not gonna get anywhere near the speeds that datora explained, unless you buy an SSD. You'd have to be pretty crazy and/or rich to be getting an SSD for external storage, though.

EmptyMemory - since you're Canadian, you ought to be using the Newegg.ca site. Don't worry though, we Canadians get our share of nice deals too. You just have to keep watch (check the site every day for Shell Shockers). If you're ever planning on taking a trip to the States, though, be sure to do some shopping while you're there, since stuff there is generally significantly cheaper due to the somewhat weaker economy.

And by the way, you can change any Newegg.com link to a .ca link and the page will work with the Canadian site.

[Blanchimont]

So uh, just make sure you guys know that even the fastest HDDs can only just exceed SATA I (1.5Gbps) speeds... Which means that, while USB 2.0 (480Mbps) can still be saturated, you're probably not gonna get anywhere near the speeds that datora explained, unless you buy an SSD. You'd have to be pretty crazy and/or rich to be getting an SSD for external storage, though.

My Lacie Minimus 2TB drives(USB2/USB3) (which I have a bunch of, recommended) run ~120 MB/s, when copying from the drive where uTorrent is running it's ~60MB/s. And these drives aren't supposed to be the fastest USB3 drives either on the market...

[EmptyMemory]

So uh, just make sure you guys know that even the fastest HDDs can only just exceed SATA I (1.5Gbps) speeds... Which means that, while USB 2.0 (480Mbps) can still be saturated, you're probably not gonna get anywhere near the speeds that datora explained, unless you buy an SSD. You'd have to be pretty crazy and/or rich to be getting an SSD for external storage, though.

EmptyMemory - since you're Canadian, you ought to be using the Newegg.ca site. Don't worry though, we Canadians get our share of nice deals too. You just have to keep watch (check the site every day for Shell Shockers). If you're ever planning on taking a trip to the States, though, be sure to do some shopping while you're there, since stuff there is generally significantly cheaper due to the somewhat weaker economy.

And by the way, you can change any Newegg.com link to a .ca link and the page will work with the Canadian site.

Yeah, I'm on .ca, just my bill went up $50 since I switched. q_q

I'm probably going to wait for a deal.

[Freedom Kira]

My Lacie Minimus 2TB drives(USB2/USB3) (which I have a bunch of, recommended) run ~120 MB/s, when copying from the drive where uTorrent is running it's ~60MB/s. And these drives aren't supposed to be the fastest USB3 drives either on the market...

I'm not sure if you're refuting what I said or reinforcing it. 120MBps is just under 1Gbps.

[AnimeJanai]

If you buy external drive cases that are metal, don't let the outside collar of the USB connector touch the metal case.  That's because some of the cheap metal cases made in China are very poorly designed.  They are designed just to be good enough to work, but not consider grounding imbalances.  In the worst ones, if you let the outside grounding collar of the USB cable touch the case, the hard drive circuitry can be blown.   I know this as I've destroyed some drives this way before I was able to realize with great disgust the problem with "made in china" external USB cases.

As for UPS, Sam's Club sells two different APC UPS units.  The price for the bigger APC unit is the best price of anywhere and is typically still lower-priced than on-sale prices at other stores such as Fry's, Office Depot, or Staples.  I like the big unit since it has automatic voltage compensation without going onto battery power.  A variac is essentially a variable autotransformer to adjust AC voltage.  Using a variac on the power input to the APC UPS to push the input voltage down to 111 volts AC doesn't cause the battery to come on, but the UPS circuitry will try to keep the output voltage close to 120 volts AC.  Dialing down the input to 109 volts AC, the output is at 118 volts without the battery coming on.

So, I am pleased with the big APC unit to NOT use the battery when attempting to maintain a consistent output voltage despite the input voltage rising or dropping.  Small units without this feature have to use the battery.

[EmptyMemory]

What's the difference between buying a bare drive + enclosure and buying something like this:
http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/western-digital-western-digital-my-book-essentials-1tb-external-hard-drive-wdbacw0010hbk-nesn-wdbacw0010hbk-nesn/10155403.aspx?path=f1b6f4e4a887d6a73095069c91a0f540en02

?

[datora]

.

What's the difference between buying a bare drive + enclosure and buying something like [...]

?

Build your own and you know the exact parts that went into it, especially you can review their quality.  Every time, quality-for-quality, it will be cheaper than a pre-made.  Anything goes wrong, you can replace the component that failed rather than exchanging or junking the entire unit.

Pre-made external HDDs use cheaper components to boost profit margins.  AND they cost more, except for the most unusual deals.

Quick, in that link you used for an example: what model hard drive is inside the enclosure?  That information will always be hidden from you until after you make the purchase and open the enclosure yourself.  Maybe you get lucky, maybe you don't.  Nothing like dropping $150 or $200 on a mysterious black box.

Also, some pre-made packages come pre-installed with software on the HDD, or have components hard-built into the case that are nothing more than branding eye-cancer for the manufacturer.  Buy a stripped, solid quality enclosure and a high quality drive, do your own formatting and you know for certain that you will get exactly an HDD that will obey you as you wish to use it.

[EmptyMemory]

Ah. I was expecting an answer like this. Thanks a ton Datora!