IDE questions

[sbluetruck]

Okay, so I was using my homemade external drive I cobbeled together from an old IDE drive and a nice but relatively inexpensive enclosure, and I got the "infamous" clicking of it dying. I was (fortunately) lucky enough to get all my data off before it finally bit the dust and now i'm in the market for a new drive.

I see that Newegg has some nice 3.5" IDE drives, 80GB for ~$40 seems like a great deal to me. my questions are.... what are the differences between IDE Ultra 100 and 133??? Also, I was looking at an 80GB, 7200RPM WD Caviar (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822144102) for $40, and the same model for $45. My question is, would a 8MB cache as opposed to a 2MB cache for an external drive be worth the extra money?

If I can use IDE Ultra 133 in an IDE enclosure, I would rather spend the money on this Hitachi drive (http://http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145161), because it seems like the better value.

I'm not looking to spend much, seeing as I got the original 30GB drive for free and spent $30 on an enclosure, but any other options are greatly appreciated! If I can spend under $50, seeing the options already out there, it would be great!

EDIT: oh, and size doesn't matter as much, but i'd look foward to maybe doing the occasional backup on it if i had the option, so i'd have a bootable disk image, maybe install Ubuntu, and get the most bang for my buck :)

Thanks for all your help guys!

[sbluetruck]

just confirmed my thought that Ultra ATA100 and Ultra ATA133 are interchageable.

gonna go with the Deskstar unless otherwise told, it seems like 160GB, 7200RPM for $54.14 after shipping is a great deal!

[Makosuke]

Just one thing you might keep in mind: Depending on how old your enclosure is, it may not recognize drives bigger than 128GB (the specs of it should say somewhere). If not, I think a 160GB drive will just appear as 128GB and still work, but if the price is the same or cheaper, there's no real advantage to getting over 120GB.

[sbluetruck]

i bought the enclosure about two weeks ago off newegg. haha lucky me, i thought i was saving money doing it this way with a free drive :rolleyes:

THIS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817716034) is the enclosure though. Pretty nice, nothing fancy and works every time.

[Consultant]

Drive price: $60 for 300gb ATA drive... I only get drives with 5 year warranty now (3 year if the price is really good), never 1 year warranty.

dealmac.com/deals/Seagate-Barracuda-300-GB-IDE-Internal-Hard-Drive-for-60-shipped/191894.html

From my experience, home made external drive (especially with the cheapest enclosures) seems to die quicker / can experience more problems than pre-made or internal drives.

[Trepex]

oh, and size doesn't matter [...] bang for my buck :)

Hehe, this made me smile. I know, I know... I'm immature.