External 2.5" SATA drives

[dp004i]

Just curious, do any of the portable external hard drives come with SATA drives inside, or are they all PATA? External drives (drive + enclosure) are often cheaper than hard drives alone for some reason; I figured I could upgrade the hard drive in my laptop and reuse the enclosure. Assuming I can find one that uses SATA, that is...

 

[corkyg]

There are many choices here. Take your pick.

eSATA

The drives are available commonly - just buy a case and roll your own. This is what I do with laptop drives generated thru upgrades.

 

[ribbon13]

Hitachi 7k100 and Vantec NST-260SU-BK

 

[Zepper]

I'd expect most external pre-packs to be PATA - SATA notebook drives aren't that common yet. Since they are so cheap, there may be performance issues. Notebook drives have always been low performance drives relative to desktop drives. So watch out for 4800 rpm drives - 5400 is the slowest you want. 7200 rpm is finally hitting the notebook drives but those are significantly more expensive. I prefer desktop drives for external as they are that much faster especially with eSATA. I guess it might not make that much diff though if you are running USB 2 or FW400.

.bh.