hi all,

I'm looking at buying an external hard drive, purely for backing up my home PC & laptop. I need about 160-200GB in size & using USB 2.0. but have a couple questions:

1. Which brand of drive is best?

2. Do I need a drive with a fan or is the aluminium case enough cooling?

3. Is it better to build your own by buying a case & drive?

4. Why do some have external power supplies? Is there any difference in performance & reliability? I'd prefer to just use USB2.0 only without ext power.

5. Do all external hard drive cases with fans require external power or can the fan run off the USB 2.0 power?

Thank you!

whether or not you can run a laptop-sized hdd off of just usb is dependant on how much power it draws... this subject has been covered out here before, you can get connectors that tie two usb ports together(??), using one of 'em to supply power, but it's not realistic for a desktop computer setup.

do not get a maxtor drive, they have a lousy warranty and are not reliable... think seagate.