I was considering getting an external HD for backup purposes. But I was wondering if it would be a better deal to get a HD enclosure since internal drives are so cheap now. Are enclosures reliable or should I stick with an external? Thanks in advance.

Hi, I am using an ADS 3.5/5.25 enclosure with a 100 gig Western Digital inside and it works perfectly. Its a USB 2.0 only enclosure. Seems to me that depending on the size drive you are thinking about, the difference between buying a drive and enclosure as seperate items as opposed to buying an external prebuilt, is not that great. For example, I just quickly priced out an 80 gig Western Digital 8 mb cache OEM drive and an enclosure, and it came to about $110 at Newegg. Then priced out the same size drive already in an enclosure and it came to about $130. This was a 2 mb cache drive and as you can see the difference is about $20. So, look around for sales and see if you can do better. If you go with buying an enclosure, two things to think about, besides the interface (firewire, USB 2.0, or both) is whether or not it has a built in fan and an on/off switch. I have seen enclosures without fans and switches. Good luck.