Which would be better for the harddrive? connect it internally within the computer? or connect it through an enclosure(external)?
or does it matter.
Thanks.

Hi,

Internal will normally be a lot faster

External may be necessary if:-
You are short of IDE or SATA connections or power connections.
Are looking at backup options to keep a backup off site
Don't want to take the top off and install a drive
Don't have physical room to install another hard disk

Lots of reasons really. Personally I'd go with internal unless you have no option. All my p.c.'s except a laptop have more than one internal hard disk.

hth

Ceri

The hard drive doesn't care if its internal or external, but you might. Only reason you might want external is if it is to be used for backup on multiple computers.

Thanks for the replies. i was more concern of the wear and tear part. would the harddrive die out faster if it is use externally?
Thanks.

As I indicated above, no, but the additional expense of an external arrangement argues against it, unless you have a specific reason for needing it.

With regards to an external enclosure, not all of them have fans do they?

If that were the case, I would wonder about the temperatures in an external enclosure and the possibility that it may shorten the life of the HD compared to having it internally?

I don't know, I haven't seen all of them. :)

Good question re fans.

Of the three enclosures I've tried, the one that I thought would be best would not work. Great fan and external power connector but apparently has a bad interface.

The one I use now has no fan, and in my opinion gets a bit warm. But I've learned to park it on edge vertically. That seems to keep it cooler.

Others have also mentioned "free-standing" internal drives used externally (via USB connections).

Like these:

"PCMS IDE TO USB 2.0 DRIVE 2.5"/3.5"/5.25" ADAPTER PC/MAC"
http://www.pcmicrostore.com/PartDetail.aspx?q=p:10501935

"SABRENT USB 2.0 TO IDE CABLE FOR 2.5"/3.5"/ 5.25" DRIVE WITH POWER ADAPTER"
http://www.pcmicrostore.com/PartDetail.aspx?q=p:10502660

"BYTECC IDE TO USB 2.0 ADAPTER FOR 2.5 / 3.5 / 5.25IN DRIVE"
http://www.pcmicrostore.com/PartDetail.aspx?q=p:10502715


With the prices of HD's, I'm thinking of using these type of connectors with HD's as backup drives - forgoing the case altogether.

I used 2 internal HD, 2 external HD (one bourght finished made; one I bought an enclousre and put a regular hard drive in). As for speed, the internal ones are noticeably a little faster, but with USB2, the external ones are pretty fast. The real joy with the external ones are they are portable; I can hook them to another pc, etc.

On the question of longevity, I cannot prove, but it seems to be that the external drive should last longer. Why? My units have switches that you can turn on or off. One of the external drive I turn the switch off and the enclosure is cool; when I want to backup my stuff there, I turn it on; it takes 2 or 3 seconds for it to come on and the drives immediately shows up, J, K, L, M. I leave the cable on; the switch is on the unit. In terms of convenience, it is unbeatable.

I set up the 2nd PC the same way: 2 internal drives, one big external drive, which is turned only when needed.

I've been thinking recently about buying an external HD caddy for my exsting Maxtor 3.5" HD and using USB connections to backup my 3 PC's and a laptop.

My intent was to use Norton Ghost 2003 and swap it to each PC in turn for creating a ghost backup, but am concerned following say a total HD failure how I would access the USB drive. First I understand the external HD caddie might require drivers for W98SE and second how would I access Ghost to run the backup to a virgin HD ?

Ghost2003 can be placed on a floppy or CD with DOS on it to boot without requiring a working Windows system. This Ghost rescue floppy/CD would also have USB/Firewire drivers for you to access your external drive to restore to your trashed system.

I'm not sure what you mean by what would happen if your drive failed completely - do you mean the drive you will be making backups to? If that is your question - well, redundancy is the key to making backups. Besides making periodic backups to the external drive, you should also make periodic backups to another media, like a DVD.

Any hard drive can fail at any time regardless of how or where you install it. That is a basic fact you need to live with. If a drive carries an MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) of 50,000 hours you can logically expect a failure somewhere between 1 second and 100,000 hours of operation That is the meaning of Mean.