Weekend project - DIY cheap 500GB external drive

I also went down the dual hard drive road with a couple of seagates. That 5 year warranty makes it woprth it when you only get 1 year on the pre built cases. checked out the Taurus too and picked mine up from here. http://www.span.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=19_1302_1324&products_id=8102

so far great unit, looks the nuts alongside my g5 and quiet as anything too.. now i can downlaod even more stuff with 1TB of storage sitting on my desk

let's hear it for jumping on the bandwagon.... first, as mentioned...Seagate and Maxtor are now the same company...products could be coming off same manufacturing lines, don't know.

having owned many many drives over the years, internal and external, the only hard failures I have ever had are Maxtor....and it's been 3 drives in the last 6 months, two 250gigs and one 500gig....seems like somebody lost the recipe

Re: #13, how is the noise level on the Igloo and Taurus?

That's one thing I like about fanless enclosures... very little noise. Positioned strategically cooling hasn't been a problem.

I bought three 200 GB Maxtor drives last year from Staples at $50 each, after mail-in rebate. One went into the old Windows tower, one went into an external drive enclosure for use with my MacBook Pro, and one's still waiting to go into service. It'll probably end up in the tower, too, eventually.

If you just want to do it on the cheap and aren't scared of refurbished greatness:
LaCie refurbished 500GB usb drive
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/clearance/products/?id=10007

Pretty solid construction :)
Refurbished 180 day warranty :(
No idea on the drive itself.

Seagate bought Maxtor over a year ago. I guess they haven't passed on their quality.

I always go for a dual-bay drive enclosure. They're a little more expensive, but you can add another drive later. I use a lot of external storage (1.5TB so far and counting) and if I had each drive in its own enclosure, that'd take up a lot of desk room and need twice the number of cables. The 5-bay (etc) cases are waaaay too expensive, but the simpe dual bay ones are reasonable. One example is the ones from Macpower, the Igloo for PATA or the Taurus for SATA.

http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hdd3/

If you get a dual enclosure, you don't have to go and get another enclosure when you want to add another drive later. And for me at least, I'm frequently adding yet another drive :-)

I currently have 3 Metal Gear Box Substance II models in diff colors. Easy to assemble, sturdy, aluminum sides so they run cool. Never a prob. Bought them at diff times from diff vendors.
Be aware that there are diff models out there. Maybe some of the older ones were more prone to problems.

If you don't like Maxtor, skip this, but otherwise, you can get a Firewire 800/400/USB 500GB in a case for $180 at Fry's:

http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4951741

Western Digital's come with 5 year warranty now too.