Hardware choices (IE impenetrable geekery)
So I’m looking to pick up an external enclosure for my internal hard drive so I can more conveniently use it on my laptop, right?
I find what I’m looking for, more or less, on cooldrives.com for about 56 bucks. They’re one of two companies to sell enclosures without a massive mark-up. Not too bad, but… I’m sorry, terrible spelling on a company website AND an insistence that no support be offered via phone AND that enclosures can’t be returned due to the “the volume of uninformed purchases” do not make me comfortable. I’ve seen a few complaints, particularly about their asshole service.
To make things worse, they’re on vacation until the 15th. WTF? 3 weeks with no one to run the place?
On the other hand, I found This lovely drive at wiebetech.com (which came recommended). Problems? No firewire (USB and eSATA) – which slows down Ben’s use of it, if ever. Also, it costs nearly twice as much ($99).
How much, though, for piece of mind? Am I willing to pay 50 bucks more for a good brand? Am I willing to pay 50 bucks less for something that might not work?
Interestingly, they also offer a laptop card for eSATA. It’s 50 bucks, which is twice as much (again) as the iSATA card I have now, but A) wouldn’t involve strange cable shenanigans and B) might not make my computer freeze up, as this one occasionally does. Of course I’d then have to return the (TOTALLY generic) one I got from compgeeks, and I doubt they’re too return-happy, either.
I know better than this, don’t I? generic purchases can work for food and (sometimes) clothing, but are never, ever good for computer hardware. Ever. The money you save will be wasted in aggravation and in the time you spend making obscure drivers work. Why am I even hesitating?
mmmm, gray market computer parts……. or “white box specials” as it were
i love compgeeks, i got my wireless logitech keyboard and mouse for next-to-nothing there, but the barcodes and serial numbers were crossed out heavily in black marker!
I’ve gotten two external enclosures from newegg, both brands I’d never heard of before, based solely on the reviews on their site. Both have been great! I think I paid $20-$30 for each. USB only though, I know nothing about firewire ones.
I bought an external enclosure to make an external for Sariah, for $14 at newegg.com. I didn’t go for anything heavy duty, because I was just making a 20 gig external for her to store her pictures on, but it was a good deal.
This was the one I got:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817173020