I need some clarification regarding Hard Disk Enclosure and a normal External HD

I am in need of at least 1 TB or 2 TB External Hard Drive where I can store all of my hard drive from my computer.
I realise I have a lot of games installed and a lot of them consume a lot of hard disk space. Hence I don't have enough space on my PC anymore. I am also in needof backing up myHard Drive so that in case I need to reformat my PC next time if my PC has a problem such as a virus, etc. Then the HD storage should then help me restore back all the data I previously had without having to install every game, software, etc from scratch.

Now I was looking between for example this Extra Value 3.5" USB2.0 & eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure for upto 1.5TB SATA Hard Drives - Retail http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149273 and this Western Digital Elements 1.5TB External Hard Drive Hi Speed USB - Retail http://www.ebuyer.com/product/178198

What is the difference between them? I see a huge price difference between the Enclosure and the normal External Hard Drive. I asked about this on yahoo answers and someone suggested me to get an enclosure one.:?

I am now confused. The Enclosure HD 1.5 TBone costs £15 from ebuyer. But if I was to buy the External HD 1.5 TB Western Digital it would cost more than £50.

I also watched a video about this here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEV5EuNcaVEwhere Tiger Direct are selling an enclosure one where you basically put your existing internal hard drive in it. But I wanna know if I was to buy for example a 1.5 TB enclosure HD and inserted my 320 GB Internal HD will I get 1820 GB Hard Disk space in total?

Could someone clarify me this and the differences between them?

Thanks!:)

I am in need of at least 1 TB or 2 TB External Hard Drive where I can store all of my hard drive from my computer.
I realise I have a lot of games installed and a lot of them consume a lot of hard disk space. Hence I don't have enough space on my PC anymore. I am also in needof backing up myHard Drive so that in case I need to reformat my PC next time if my PC has a problem such as a virus, etc. Then the HD storage should then help me restore back all the data I previously had without having to install every game, software, etc from scratch.

Now I was looking between for example this Extra Value 3.5" USB2.0 & eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure for upto 1.5TB SATA Hard Drives - Retail http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149273 and this Western Digital Elements 1.5TB External Hard Drive Hi Speed USB - Retail http://www.ebuyer.com/product/178198

What is the difference between them? I see a huge price difference between the Enclosure and the normal External Hard Drive. I asked about this on yahoo answers and someone suggested me to get an enclosure one.:?

I am now confused. The Enclosure HD 1.5 TBone costs £15 from ebuyer. But if I was to buy the External HD 1.5 TB Western Digital it would cost more than £50.

I also watched a video about this here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEV5EuNcaVEwhere Tiger Direct are selling an enclosure one where you basically put your existing internal hard drive in it. But I wanna know if I was to buy for example a 1.5 TB enclosure HD and inserted my 320 GB Internal HD will I get 1820 GB Hard Disk space in total?

Could someone clarify me this and the differences between them?

Thanks!:)

BLaZiNg_SPEED

that 1.25tb enclosure means thats how large the ahrd drive can get before it wont see the drive anymore so like you could have a 320gb drive thatd be fine.. but a 2tb drive wouldnt work.. mainly due to the read/write limitations of e-sata

so no it wouldnt be a 1.8tb drive popping a 320gb hdd in it.. you would be getting jsut a 320gb hdd out of it..

actually i have an enclosure it ahs ubuntu running on it as well as a backup iamge on my pc

here is my enclosure..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392030

The price difference is somewhat simple, the "Extra Value" product is just a case, you need to supply the hard drive. The Western Digital product comes with a 1.5TB hard drive ready to go, no need for your own hard drive. If you buy the Extra Value product and supply your own drive, the size of the external will only be that of what ever drive you put into the case, and the maximum size you can put in is a 1.5TB drive.Realmkiller

in the one i suggested the max is two.. but what you fial to factor is that the portal hard drive your looking @ is much slower its either s 5400rpm or 4500rpm HDD in there mine can be a 7200 rpm or 10000 rpm much faster read speeds indeed..

mine also uses e-sata those wille ither use firewire or usb 2.0 and compared to e-sata or sata they just dont stack up..

usb 3.0 or firewire 2.0 is another matter but 9/10 their usb 2.0/1.0 or firewire 1.0 and therefore inferior..

So then what is the real use of the Hard Disk Enclosure if it doesn't really do much, apart from adding some additional ports or cooling the hard drive?:?

It's good I am now clearer about this and I am glad I didn't rush to order that £15 Hard Disk Enclosure.

I might go for the Western Digital 1 TB or 1.5 TB hard drive seeing that the 2 TB is a lot more expensive and perhaps I don't really need 2 TB.

1 TB is probably more than sufficient enough for me.

I only have 3.79 GB at the moment remaining out of the 320 GB HD space, lol. And a total of 34 games installed. Will certainly need to add some more hard drive space.:)

So then what is the real use of the Hard Disk Enclosure if it doesn't really do much, apart from adding some additional ports or cooling the hard drive?:?

It's good I am now clearer about this and I am glad I didn't rush to order that £15 Hard Disk Enclosure.

I might go for the Western Digital 1 TB or 1.5 TB hard drive seeing that the 2 TB is a lot more expensive and perhaps I don't really need 2 TB.

1 TB is probably more than sufficient enough for me.

I only have 3.79 GB at the moment remaining out of the 320 GB HD space, lol. And a total of 34 games installed. Will certainly need to add some more hard drive space.:)

BLaZiNg_SPEED

well then god speed..

and its purpose is that its not limited to a specific size and it can run much fatser ahrd drives than the portable ahrd drive can..

its also alot more resistant to things like falls from desks & such.. finally you can actually BOOT WINDOWS off a hard drive in an enclosure and lose almost 0 performance.. hence why i have ubuntu on mine..

in the one i suggested the max is two.. but what you fial to factor is that the portal hard drive your looking @ is much slower its either s 5400rpm or 4500rpm HDD in there mine can be a 7200 rpm or 10000 rpm much faster read speeds indeed..

mine also uses e-sata those wille ither use firewire or usb 2.0 and compared to e-sata or sata they just dont stack up..

ionusX

I'm beginning to think you didn't look at what the OP was originally looking at. The "Extra Value" product lists both USB2.0 and eSATA capabilites. The RPM of a drive doesn't matter to an external case, that Western Digital the OP linked to in the first post is a 7200 drive. You could stick a 10k in there if you wished as long as it's interface works with the external case.

its also alot more resistant to things like falls from desks & such.. finally you can actually BOOT WINDOWS off a hard drive in an enclosure and lose almost 0 performance.. hence why i have ubuntu on mine..

ionusX

External drives are much more susceptible to damage since they can be freely moved at anytime. A single drop has the potential of breaking something internally no matter how old the drive is.

Yes it is possible to get Windows to boot from an external, but unless it is a hacked version, or the machines you use it on are all identical in the hardware department, then the Windows installation will detect the hardware change and ask you to reinstall it. Ubuntu on the other hand doesn't overly care what hardware it's running on and won't make you reinstall.

So then what is the real use of the Hard Disk Enclosure if it doesn't really do much, apart from adding some additional ports or cooling the hard drive?

BLaZiNg_SPEED

Back-ups and large file transfers/storage. Depending on how you wish to connect it, there can be major transfer delays over USB of a lot of data unless you use the eSATA port then it's a bit less.

You need to remember that most hard drives have different read/write speeds. USB2.0 claims 480Mbps but most normal hard drives cannot read/write that fast and so you won't see that high of a speed on regular hardware. Once you start spending money on SSD's and SCSI's with 15k rpms then maybe you'll get faster speeds but for everyday use it's usually somewhere between 30 and 60 greatly depending.