External Drive

Willbo · 24 Sep 2007 at 08:24

I'm looking to get a laptop very soon to help with my training course.
I've got a 500GB hard drive as a back up drive in my main PC, but I want to have a hard drive as external so I can swap between the laptop and PC as and when needed.....
My question is.......

Do I buy a hard drive enclosure for my Western Digital WDC5000AAKS and run that externally, or do I buy a complete external hard drive package?

Your help and views would be appreciated

rpstewart · 24 Sep 2007 at 08:37

I suppose it depends on whether you can live without having the AAKS in the desktop PC all the time. Moving it into a caddy will be the cheapest option but there other things to consider.

Do you need an external drive which is portable or are you happy to bring the laptop to the drive? If you can bring the laptop to the drive then does it need to be external at all, what about simply networking and sharing the AAKS from inside the other PC? This does mean having both turned on of course.

If you decide to go external then you're looking at USB2 for a connection to the laptop, you could use this for connecting to the desktop as well but the performance isn't as good as eSATA so it's possibly worth considering a caddy which will do both. You then want to avoid the usual IcyBox IB360 because you need to open it up to swap between USB and eSATA, the IcyDock MB559 however, allows you to jump between the two easily (not sure what happens if you power it up connected to 2 PCs though).

Willbo · 24 Sep 2007 at 13:31

Thanks for a real helpful reply rpstewart

To give more information, the drive will be used purely for backup, and more than likely...carrying around with me when I go out or use my laptop at other places. Unless I'm at home then obviously the laptop will be near enough to just network.

So really, external is my main goal so the drive can be moved about.

You mention the IcyDock MB559. Will that be the best option? So I can install my SATA Drive and connect to my laptop via USB and my PC via eSata? Does the enclosure have its own power supply I gather?

rpstewart · 24 Sep 2007 at 13:37

Willbo said:
You mention the IcyDock MB559. Will that be the best option? So I can install my SATA Drive and connect to my laptop via USB and my PC via eSata? Does the enclosure have its own power supply I gather?

Yup, just chuck any old SATA drive in there and you're away. Power is from an external brick.

I'm perfectly happy with mine, the only issue was that it shipped with a European power cord rather than a 3 pin UK one. Swift webnote to OCUK got that sorted out though.