Best 500gb+ usb2 external hd to send to nephew in Iraq?

[kant]

My nephew needs a large external hard drive. I have 2 WD MyBooks, but they get a little warm to the touch here at my desk. Not certain how'd they perform in 120+ heat.

So who has the best external case for high heat environments?

 

[NiroshanMan]

WD MyPassport SPecs
Environmental Specifications
Temperature (English)
Operating 41° F to 104° F
Non-operating -4° F to 149° F
Temperature (Metric)
Operating 5° C to 40° C
Non-operating -20° C to 65° C

WD MyBook Specs
Environmental Specifications
Temperature (English)
Operating 41° F to 95° F
Non-operating -4° F to 149° F
Temperature (Metric)
Operating 5° C to 35° C
Non-operating -20° C to 65° C

 

[Michael CM1]

I know nothing about the military so this may be stupid, but he wouldn't be using a drive in 120 degree heat, would he? I mean the bases have some sort of cooling, right? I just figure people would drop dead being in 120 degree heat all day long.

Anyways, after a couple of minutes of searching, try www.cooldrives.com. Get one of the aluminum cases (those dissipate heat better than other metals) and find any SATA hard drive to put in there. I essentially did this with an old notebook hard drive so I didn't have a junk hard drive. It was VERY easy. I think most new HDDs now are SATA. Just FYI the 2.5" is the notebook drive size and the 3.5" is the desktop drive size. I don't think you can get bigger than 500GB in the 2.5" size. 3.5" goes up to maybe 1.5TB.

As far as reliability, I like the WD drives a lot. I have never had one go bad (knock on wood). I just put a new one in my MBP and just bought a new terabyte My Book for Time Machine use. A couple of places have the 1TB My Book for $200 this week (down from $280). If you buy a drive seperately like I explained above, the drive itself should be about $190 (that's what it is at Buy.com).

Hope some of this helps!