Nope. You didn't miss anything.

Just make sure you buy from a reputable outfit, so you can return it easily if you don't like it.

I bought an ADS Pyro enclosure a year ago, and it works great. The Pyro has a cooling fan inside; I don't know if yours does. A fan means your drive won't get as hot as otherwise, which would imply a longer life. Probably not critical, though.

See my other post for a detailed answer - conceptually you are correct - it's easy to build and use outboard drives - and they WORK.

Your prices are off, though. Watch for the Sunday newspaper sales on Internal hard drives. I've bought 250gig Seagates for as little as $99 bucks.

I don't approve of Firewire enclosures, not because they don't work - just they are a pain to install and un-install - tiny screws, covers, etc.

I use the Wiebetech Firewire Drive docks. ( www.wiebetech.com )
They are tiny and you just plug them into the hard drive.
When I finish my daily edit, I unplug them and store them (when not in use) in small Rubbermaid sandwich boxes.

Buying an external case for me was a way to keep using my old 40gig Quantum hard-drive.
I've switched to SATA and I wanted to set-up the Quantum in an external case. Now I'll have that to keep my Acid loop libraries.

Mario

I put a removable tray system in the external case (like the cheap Genica tray system you can buy on ebay). I have a single external case with a tray system at the office and a double external case with a tray system at home (double - so I can copy from drive to drive). I have about a dozen trays that I fill with big hard drives that I buy on sale. If you work with others who have the same external case with the same tray system installed, you can just send the tray and not the whole enclosure.

Make sure you use "SAFE REMOVAL" before switching trays!!!

BTW: if you don't like the cheap plastic Genica tray system, I also have the aluminum tray system that Mackie hard disk recorders use. Same thing except trays are about 4 times more expensive.

I'm not sure "it's building your own," but external drive kits are a nice solution. I had to put my computer desk together, but I never thought that I "built" it.

The value really comes in when you buy more than one drive, since you only have to buy the case once.

You want to go with a reputable company for the kit. I'm not sure that I would go with a generic case. It's the chipset inside the case, that will deternine if you have problems with it or not.

For firewire cases, you want to go with a case that uses an Oxford 911 chipset. You may want a bigger case for heat/ease of assembly issues.

You can search this board for a lot of posts on that. For USB 2.0, I don't know if there is recommneded chipset. I use an ADS dual-link kit that is firewire/usb2.0. It works nicely. ADS also has a USB 2.0 case that they sell for around $60.

If you're talking desktops, a 'drawer' or 'removeable' is the ideal method for preputual storage. I've used them for years. I'm not talking firefire. Just simple drawers. They come in two parts. The outer case slides in through your front panel and requires a free slot like a DVD drive. The inner 'drawer' part contains a regular IDE drive. You slide this inner box that hold the drive in and out. The drive gets its power from your PC. I've lost count how many I have. These are much cheaper. About $20 and work great. Almost all models I've seen have a key. They are very simple to install. One time open your PC case, punch out the bevel on any free slot, slide the outer drawer in, plug in a power and data cable. That's it. The inner drawer holds the drive. Just drop it, secure with screws, plug in cables. The only real down side is you must power down to switch drives.

There all look pretty much like this:

http://www.dealtime.com/xPF-Removable_Hard_Drive_Drawer_DRW110ATA

There is another down side to the removable tray type system. Some computer enclosures, notably some DELL, enclosures, do not have anything to screw the main case to. That leaves it floating loose in the opening. Dell insists they don't have any guide rails or other adapters that will allow you to secure the case to, either. We stopped buying DELLs because of this.

So you may want to be sure the two part removable system can actually be secured properly into the case before you commit to them. Otherwise, they are the best, cheapest, and most reliable of all. As far as the computer is concerned, they are a normally installed INTERNAL hard drive.

I would not recommend using the same external FW/USB case for more than one drive, except occasional changeovers.

Firstly, the cases don't cost much - I have eight - and if you're constanly swapping drives over, sooner or later you'll damage an EIDE connector or some other fragile component.

Also, by having several cases you can daisy chain them and use simultaneously.

Yeah, but if your case is big enough to handle a removeable drive bay rig, there ya go. I have the same bay in a FW case as I have in each of my PCs, so I have lots of flexibility when capturing & editing.

Another reason why I don't buy pre-made PC's. I once had a Dell. One was enough. Oh it worked OK, but the case.... the front had two little spring clamps you had to push together in order for the front panel to swing back to gain access so you could add a CD drive or something. Sounds simple, but in practice murder. Once you had it off, getting it back on was worse. Then there was the problem with the main power switch. Just a little round button. Trouble was the alignment of the chassic and the case was off just enough if you pushed the button it wouldn't pop back out enough to allow you to turn the thing off. It constantly got stuck in the pushed in position. So I had to constantly stick a thin screwdriver blade in between the button and case to pop the button out. Together for those two little problems I must have spend five hours on the phone, mostly holding for get it resolved. Never bought another pre-build again and never will again.

Billy Boy.....yes, I agree. I'd never buy a pre-made PC, especially a Dell again. I bought a Dell Dimension 8300, and am trying to make the best of it. I fitted a Kingwin Mobile Rack into a vacant 5.25" drive bay , so now I can swap hard drives in such a manner as you described in one of your previous posts in this thread. I used an exacto knife to fine tune the fitting of the opening at the bottom edge of the case lip around the drive bay opening. Other than that, everything went in smoothly, and I was able to screw the main mobile rack case to the inner Dell chassis,...unlike the problems wcoxe1 mentions above. I just buy the inner trays that hold the drives for around $15.00 each, and have at least 6 of these inner trays with various sized hard drives so far. They're not hot-swapable, but I just figure out which drive I'd like to work with each time I boot up. They're so easy to just pop in or out.

I'll share something funny. The other day I mentioned I bought a cheapo no-name aluminum case for about $60. It didn't have anything to screw the removable drawer into either. So, I just duct taped it in place and its been fine like that for several years. It does slip a little, but a quick "repair" and its as good as new.

Well maybe you missed something.

I bought a cheap no-name external USB box and put a WD drive in it. The box had a down-level chip in it (without looking I think it was 811 vs 911). It worked fine with my two notebooks but on my desktop I couldn't write anything bigger than tiny files to it without major problems -- it would go offline and require a power reset to be recognised again. Not good because I manly wanted to start on the desktop and migrate to the notebooks as necessary.

I bought a much more expensive ADS box with USB and 1394. Putting the same drive in it, it works fine with all my PCs.

So you pays your money and you takes your chances. If you go cheap and no-name, you may win or you may lose. If you buy just one for starters, it may be a good gamble.

As mentioned, I think the ADS box has a fan too, which may or may not be important.

In case you're still shopping...
I bought a USB 2.0 external case from Bytecc. Very inexpensive at $38Canadian on sale (Newegg has it for $33).
It has great reviews. A 10/10 at 3DXtreme.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=11362&vpn=1024-9C20-HD-SA

Mario

Note that for the lazy among you....
I was thinking about doing the build it yourself approach but I was walking through CompUsa the other day and saw a USB 2.0 Lacie 160 Gb drive for $159

..Sure firewire would have been nice but since I just intend to use this for offline storage I was not all that worried about overall speed.

While you can do slightly better than this going mailorder and doing it yourself...it is still a good deal and it lets you get instant gratification..

Only annoying thing (but understandable) is that it ships pre-formatted as fat32. I copied a much of files to it before I realized it was not NTFS...

So if you get one, reformat NTFS before you start..it will save you some pain.

>" I was not all that worried about overall speed."

I have found USB2 to be slightly faster than firewire. I don't have the figures, but there have been times when F/W was stuttering, the same drive via USB2 was fine ...

I'd bet that was your specific chipset, rather than a firewire problem in general, Peter. There shouldn't be a noticeable speed difference. Was your case an Oxford chipset?