Building external 1 TB HDD

[BrokenE]

Hi all,

I've done some research on external drive recommendations here. I've read the buying guide thread and most of the threads that it pointed to.

I have narrowed it down to an OWC:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/eliteclassic

or one of the WD with fire wire 800 or building my own with a WD green drive.

My main priorities are for the drive to be quiet, cool and very reliable. I will be used only to back up my 1TB iMac i5.

I am leaning towards building my own so...My questions:
1. In terms of best reliability, what are the different classes of drives. I've heard of the term "enterprise". Is this a higher grade of components? How can I tell from looking at newegg.com which are the "better" drives? I would be looking at WD, hitachi and seagate, with preference in that order. Those seem to be the leaders. Any guidance you can give would be appreciated.

2. Once I pick a disk, what else will I need? I've never built an external drive before so need some help/advise. I know I need an enclosure but not sure if I need to purchase a controller, etc, etc. Which enclosures have good cooling? I am thinking of strapping the external drive to the back of my iMac stand.

Thanks for your help and advise. 🙂

 

[BrokenE]

bump?

 

[talmy]

Enterprise drives are designed for continuous access, like one would find in a server with heavy use.

Your best be for running cool is to have a script that mounts the drive before backing up, do the back up (incremental using SuperDuper!), and then unmount the drive. The duty cycle will be so low that the power consumption will be immaterial.

 

[MacInTO]

I use Macally enclosures. They are made out of aluminum and have no fan or moving parts. Quiet - except for the sound of the drive. The aluminum works much like the unibody as a heatsink.

 

[greenboy]

I would recommend a Western Digital Green Drive. Those are more power efficient and hence they run cooler. I use it with an Icy Dock firewire enclosure. They are fanless and very quiet, they also look very nice and I haven't had a problem in 2+ years.