I'm looking to upgrade my macbook hard drive from the 80gb to a 250 or 320 gig. I was thinking about buying on the western digital external drives and pop it open so i can put the old drive back in there for backup. just wondering if anyone done this lately to know for sure that the 2.5" drive in there is a sata drive.
Model #: WDC WDME3200TN
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8621397&type=product&id=1193234237337
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/West...01493/catOid/-12973/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do
Do it if you like the price point. If you put a premium on performance, then you need to do more research before you decide. Here are some considerations:
1) WD are not the greatest drive and generally have a slightly higher fail rate than other quality drives, e.g. Hitachi, Seagate. There will be lots of opinions, and someone will reply "my hitachi died" or "my WD is great." Google for stats, and get the big picture, not individual stories.
2) There are 4 key components in an external enclosure: 1. the drive interface inside the box, 2. the drive interface outside the box 3. the chipset being used by the enclosure. All of these three will impact reads and speeds. and 4. the cooling/heat sink. You can google ratings on the enclosures and the drives you are considering.
One other note: your proposal above, I can almost guarantee, voids the warrantee on both the drive and the enclosure.
I would guess that in such a cheap external drive, the enclosure HDD chipset is not grand. Also, it's likely they might use a slightly lower build quality drive, as stand along drive units are often purchased for RAID arrays and other critical work. But, if others say they've done it, and if speed/performance is not a premium for you, then try it out and let us know how it works. I'm always into saving some coin (especially on someone else's credit card
)
(One other thing: you should really find out the base drive in that pre-built external enclosure and compare things like disk cache, etc. Make sure you are comparing like drives.)
