Having Hard Time - Which External Hd ? Options

[Milca]

Hello guys

I’m planning to buy two external HD
one for my samples and one for my back up.( I have also two internal ones - one for recording audio and other one as a boot drive)
I ‘ve read bunch of reviews and posts and still I’m not sure which way should I go.
From all I’ve read it seems to me that the most important issues is
whether should I buy enclosure and HD separately or buy it like it is from the store.

This has left me with 3.different choices
1) Go with the HD like Seagate Push button 300 GB or Maxtor One touch 300 GB
(Both firewire and USB)
or new Seagate Free Agent( USB, SATA) 320 GB ( this one is without power supply - don’t know whether that is not an issue ? )
With those I’m pretty sure they would be all right for back up purposes but as far as running samples ( and possibly recording I’m not sure whether temperature and “heat issues “ would not be a problem)

2) Second choice would be to go with HD like Glyph which are advertised as “external storages for audio production”.I’m not really sure whether they are really that good or it is just marketing strategy to promote them - they are pretty expensive - anybody is using those?

3)Go with enclosures.Lot of people doing music production is describing this as an ideal solution.Since I’m a newbie - I can’t see all the advantages of this setup (besides the price) And mainly I’m not a technical geek and so I’m little worried how I would put it all together and about later stability.
I would really appreciate any feedback as far as which way you should go.
I’m stuck on this issue for a long time and can’t come up with good answer.
Thanks for your time

[lepetitmartien]

I may add (was very tired yesterday eve… had to stop short)

I've never used back up ready hard drives so I can't say much about them. I way for a software solution, as I said, Déjà Vu is a KISS solution (keep it simple stupid).

Watch for Oxford or Initio bridged enclosures, check hard drives specks:
- MTBF
- noise
- seek time (important for samples)
- read time (same plus playback of audio)
- write time (recording)

Not all are important for the back up (where MTBF and write are way more important)

All the specs are at the drive manufacturer website.