Which HD for turning internal into external?

[vsp]

I'm thinking of getting a cheaper internal hard drive and putting it in an empty case and using it as an external, just to save some money. My ultimate goal here is to get most of my music onto one drive.

It's a wonderful idea except that I don't really know what I'm looking for.
1. Is there any particular type of drive I should purchase?
2. Anything I should stay away from?
3. Any difference between ATA, ATA/100, and ATA/133?
4. Can I use an old SCSI drive I have sitting around?

I've found quite a few websites that describe how to put the drive into a case but none that talk about what sort of drive to purchase. And that's the area I'm totally lost in.

Thanks for any advice or tips you can toss my way.
Vince

 

[daveL]

I'm thinking of getting a cheaper internal hard drive and putting it in an empty case and using it as an external, just to save some money. My ultimate goal here is to get most of my music onto one drive.

It's a wonderful idea except that I don't really know what I'm looking for.
1. Is there any particular type of drive I should purchase?
2. Anything I should stay away from?
3. Any difference between ATA, ATA/100, and ATA/133?
4. Can I use an old SCSI drive I have sitting around?

I've found quite a few websites that describe how to put the drive into a case but none that talk about what sort of drive to purchase. And that's the area I'm totally lost in.

Thanks for any advice or tips you can toss my way.
Vince

Since you haven't told us what kind of system you have, you've made it a bit difficult to answer your questions.

How do you plan to connect the external drive to your system? USB2, Firewire, SATA, IDE, SCSI? The generic answer would be a modern EIDE drive supporting ATA/100 (you said a cheap disk drive) in a combo firewire400/USB2 enclosure. Unless you have an external SCSI connector on the back of your system (old Mac, maybe), you don't want SCSI.

 

[vsp]

Since you haven't told us what kind of system you have, you've made it a bit difficult to answer your questions.

My bad, trying to get too many small things done this morning.

I've got an 15 AL PB, 1.25 Ghz, 1 GB memory. Since I intened on playing music from this drive I figured that connecting to the Firewire port (400 or 800) would be the easiest. If I ever have anything connected to those ports it's temporary, whereas the USB ports are usually taken.

 

[daveL]

In that case, my advice above stands.

HTH