Thread: External HD
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Old 02-23-2011, 10:27 PM   #13
syee
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ddr View Post
largest 9mm atm is 750gb

my 9.99 'velocity' branded (memX's house brand) 2.5 enclosure works perfectly

only some of the name brand external drives have good engineering. a lot of them are just plastic. even my 9.99 was metal.
Good engineering goes beyond just a metal case. I was speaking more along the lines of drive selection (using a drive that doesn't draw more than the current that a single USB port can provide - 500mA) as well as using decent USB to SATA chipsets that doesn't cause drives to drop out.

A metal case while nice does very little for performance (well, it does help disperse some heat) but isn't the only thing to look for in an external drive. One of my first 2.5" enclosures was aluminum but would always drop it's connection because of the crappy chipset and a power hungry drive. Ended up corrupting the drive contents so badly it became unreadable.

A single power connector may possibly be preferable if you're plugging it into a laptop since there's usually a limited number of USB ports on the laptop. (Yes, you can use a powered USB hub but it's inconvenient and not everyone has one)
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