I don't know if anyone has checked prices on external harddrives lately, but the 500 Gb My Book harddrives at best buy are $199 now... :)  I have one of those already and I love it... and I think you can just string them together if you get multiple ones, at least that's what they show in the picture on the box.  ?

My hubby got me one for Christmas and here it sits on my desk waiting to be used. I even got the neat carring case from Western Digital for it. Hopfully soon I'll start putting my pictures on it and get them off my laptop.

Marjie

I just got the same one at Costco for $229 (premium edition) and that was a great deal compared to Best Buy (at the time), so that is a really great buy.  I think the price can depend on the connection (premium vs. standard?).

Yea the $199 was for the dual-connection version, which I think is the "premium" or whatever they call it... regular price was $299.  I think I paid over $200 for a 250Gb one not that long ago!

I concur.  I picked one up several weeks ago -- got the 500gb MyBook drive for 179 at my local Best Buy.  Love it.  I use it as a backup drive...run a quick batch script to dump my critical data to the backup disk every night

Here is a 500GB Western Digital 7200RPM SATA/300 hard drive for 144.99, and you get a free drive case.  I ordered this tonight -  Only a couple days left on the sale.

Dawn

 

http://www.geeks.com/pix/2007/freeCASE17Jan07.html?cpc=HPM

I just bought me one too a couple weeks ago.  This is my second one. 

I must strongly caution you AGAINST non-fan cooled external disk drives. With all my searching I have found one and only one external drive enclosure that has a fan. Realize that the biggest enemy of disk drives is heat. Virtually all pre-made external disk drives have no fan and rely on a tightly fitting metal case to cool the drive. If you're going to use one of these pre-made external drives, turn it on ONLY for data storage or retrieval and then turn it off! Better yet, buy a case that has a fan (Ultra has one at TigerDirect) and put an internal drive into the case.

FirstLight:

Here is a 500GB Western Digital 7200RPM SATA/300 hard drive for 144.99, and you get a free drive case.  I ordered this tonight -  Only a couple days left on the sale.

Dawn

 

http://www.geeks.com/pix/2007/freeCASE17Jan07.html?cpc=HPM

 

OOOH!  I like this deal... thanks for the heads up.  I really am building up a stockpile of drives though... How many of you keep multiple copies of archived files?  For example, DVD and hard-drive. 

I have read messages from people that say you must have a fan for an external drive, and I've seen messages even from people in the industry that say they put fans on certain units only to keep from loosing customers.

A good external harddrive like My Book has a well built case, which includes a heat dissipating enclosure... I can tell that mine has been on all day now and it is cool to the touch all around, and the air passing through the vents isn't even warm, it is cool.  The external drive only works when it is being accessed, so there doesn't seem to be much benefit to turning it on and off.  I worry a lot more about the harddrives in my laptop, even though there are about 5 fans in that thing, because it gets so hot (desktop replacement)... but seriously, I check my My Book all the time just out of curiosity and it is never even warm much less hot... so I'm not too concerned.

Plus, they are so easy to use, you can easily link up multiples books together, they look great, and if you are really concerned you can be backing up to DVD or another drive as well (which we should be doing anyway).

FirstLight:

Here is a 500GB Western Digital 7200RPM SATA/300 hard drive for 144.99, and you get a free drive case.  I ordered this tonight -  Only a couple days left on the sale.

Dawn

Now this is one I would worry about with a cheap case like that... spend the extra 50 bucks and get a 500 Gb My Book that will protect your data a lot better!  That is a huge harddrive (lots of pictures!) to be putting in a cheap case like that.

I've owned a MyBook and returned it when I saw the close enclosure. The reason it doesn't feel hot is that the case is plastic. No air movement means poor cooling. And the disk spins even when you don't access it unless the controller in the case puts the disk to sleep. I have a half-dozen external drives, all get hot when they're on, all will have heat problems if left on for a long time.

Rionoir:

I have read messages from people that say you must have a fan for an external drive, and I've seen messages even from people in the industry that say they put fans on certain units only to keep from loosing customers.

A good external harddrive like My Book has a well built case, which includes a heat dissipating enclosure... I can tell that mine has been on all day now and it is cool to the touch all around, and the air passing through the vents isn't even warm, it is cool.  The external drive only works when it is being accessed, so there doesn't seem to be much benefit to turning it on and off.  I worry a lot more about the harddrives in my laptop, even though there are about 5 fans in that thing, because it gets so hot (desktop replacement)... but seriously, I check my My Book all the time just out of curiosity and it is never even warm much less hot... so I'm not too concerned.

Plus, they are so easy to use, you can easily link up multiples books together, they look great, and if you are really concerned you can be backing up to DVD or another drive as well (which we should be doing anyway).

Are you saying you'd rather the outer shell of the drive was metal???  The very external shell of the book is plastic, yes, it is decorative.  Also, plastic conducts heat... if there was hot air beneath the plastic you'd feel it... that doesn't make sense?  There is clearly something beneath the plastic, look at how big the entire case is vs the size of a harddrive... what's beneath is a heat dissipating shield, and that's why you don't feel hot air.  And I can hear when my disk starts spinning or not, and it only spins when it is accessed... and it goes to sleep when the computer does.  I've had my current drive for over a year and have never manually turned it off and it works beautifully.

Heat dissipation isn't just a city in China... LoL Sorry couldn't resist... =P

For my purposes, this is a great deal.  145 dollars for 500GB of storage?  I have a 300GB Seagate external drive connected through Firewire, and it is filling up so it is slowing down.  I need this extra storage to be able to put some things "on the shelf" so to speak.

I love my Seagate drive, and yes it is fan cooled, and it also "sleeps" if not accessed for a certain amount of time.  I have this 4-year-old system running pretty smoothly, and use the 300GB drive as scratch for PS even ( I know everyone says you can't do this and that it is stupid slow, but I have it working very well).  You'd never know I only have 512 ram, and an older processor.  Still, my baby - my computer - has seen better days lately.  My brother is coming this weekend (finally) to help me order part so we can build a new one.  SOOO excited!!

Ok, TMI - lol - but I was just saying that this is a great deal for something to use as pure storage, especially if you are a Megabyte PackRat - like me.  lol 

Standard operating temp for a hard drive can range from 5-65 celcius, different drives will have different ranges. Heat may be a contributing factor for failure eventually, but unless you're taking the drive into areas beyond it's operating temperature, the drive is made and stress tested to take fairly high heat. I'd be more worried about failure from long term use, head failure, misaligned platters, high humidity, high static discharges, electromagnetic fields such as from an overhead lamp or fan, etc, then heat. If you're still not sure, there are 5 externals I have at work, they all have been on for roughly about 2 years straight. None of them have failed, and yes they get pretty hot, enough so that I wouldn't want to hold it long. Every external enclosure has a metal interior to hold the hard drive, then an external shell of either plastic or another type of alloy. I've never seen nor I'm sure will I ever see an external enclosure that's 100 percent plastic anytime soon. (well okay...other then my friend's system who has his hard drive placed inside a bread box, but it's on metal "stilts" so I still count that as metal)

All of my external drives are aluminum encased and the aluminum case gets hot when the drives are on. Plastic does not conduct heat well, it's an insulator. Some heat is still generated in a drive that's asleep, and your controllers must be designed to put the disk to sleep. Before I'd say your drives are cool, I'd want to feel the actual cooling device (i.e., the metal casing) before I declare them vented properly. The one thing that does cool a drive is moving air. What I'm recommending is a forced-air case such as the Ultra.

What I can tell you is that I've never had an internal drive fail due to heat. I've had numerous external, non-vented drives fail fairly quickly and all their cases were hot. When I have computers built, I have a fan blow over the disk drives.

Rionoir:

Are you saying you'd rather the outer shell of the drive was metal???  The very external shell of the book is plastic, yes, it is decorative.  Also, plastic conducts heat... if there was hot air beneath the plastic you'd feel it... that doesn't make sense?  There is clearly something beneath the plastic, look at how big the entire case is vs the size of a harddrive... what's beneath is a heat dissipating shield, and that's why you don't feel hot air.  And I can hear when my disk starts spinning or not, and it only spins when it is accessed... and it goes to sleep when the computer does.  I've had my current drive for over a year and have never manually turned it off and it works beautifully.

Heat dissipation isn't just a city in China... LoL Sorry couldn't resist... =P

Again, not really sure that is relevant to anything I said but we can all use whatever type of harddrives we want.  I'll stick with the one that has been flawless for the last year+ and you stick with what works for u...

Quite honestly (and being a Mechanical Engr with 25+ years in Computer Design and Mfg), in most cases a fan in a (single drive) external drive enclosure is so much marketing hooey. The operating temperatures (as mentioned earlier) are such that passive venting of the enclosure is usually adequate (hot air expands and rises! Real science!). If the enclosure is totally sealed, a metal case has some advantages. Poke some holes in it and the adavantages pretty much go away.

 Unless your ambient room temp is close to the max operating temp of the drive, forced air a waste.

 Altho it certainly doesn't hurt unless it sucks in dust (which is actually quite likely), it's usually a way for the case maker to add some profit.

Actually I prefer the blue neon lights inside a clear enclosure, they align the incoming cosmic rays and prevent them from interfering with my titanium-shielded oxygen-free data cables.....

kenw:

Actually I prefer the blue neon lights inside a clear enclosure, they align the incoming cosmic rays and prevent them from interfering with my titanium-shielded oxygen-free data cables.....

LoL