good external hard drives (e.g. WD Elements)?

[Braden McDaniel]

On Thu, 2009-07-16 at 23:28 +0930, Tim wrote:
> Does anybody know if the "WD Elements" hard drives in enclosures with
> USB ports work with Fedora pain free?  I've heard tales of some drive
> enclosures that go asleep on you, but can't recall if it were this range
> of models, and there's some of these on sale locally for a reasonable
> price.

I think buying an external enclosure and drive separately is a better
option.

My experience with the quality of drives sold as "external drives" has
not been good.  Check the warranty periods on the external drives you're
looking at.  They're typically just for one or two years; occasionally
three years.  The WD Elements drive you're looking at appears just to
have a one year warrany[1].  Meanwhile, look at the warranty periods for
most internal SATA drives: they're typically at least three years; and
it's not too hard to find drives with five year warranties.

Buying the drive separately from the enclosure means that you can get a
higher quality, more reliable drive.

[1] http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp?wdc_lang=en

-- 
Braden McDaniel <braden at endoframe.com>