need an external hard drive

[MichaelHo]

The 60 gigs on my macbook is filling up fast, i need an external hard drive to keep some files like old photos and movies etc.
I was looking at a WD mybook premium 320 gig for around £100 but however i have read somewhere that these external HDD's do not have a long life and instead it is better to get a encasing for an internal ide HDD but i know nothing about this, can someone explain to me what it is.

TIA.

Michael.

 

[rpstewart]

External hard disks are simply internal drives in cases, either pre-built in the case of the mybook or assembled yourself.

Obviously the pre-built ones work straight out of the box and also sometimes come with backup software etc but, usually, they only have a 12 month warranty and you have no choice of the make of drive used (not normally even advertised).

With a self build you can pick the caddy with the features you want and pair it with the drive of your choice. This way you can take advantage of the longer warranties on bare drives as well as being able to pick your preferred brand.

 

[MichaelHo]

what features make a good casing?