External Hard drive configuration questions

[Petrucci914]

Hello,

I'm definetely thinking of getting an external hard drive to run everything. Do you recommend I buy a kit from Seagate or would I be better off buying an enclosure and mounting my own? If I do that can I use an SATA drive and even a WD Raptor 10000 RPM drive? I was thinking about getting a Maxtor 16mb cache 7200 drive but it'd probably be nice to have that 10000 RPM drive. Would I always have to use that one program to have it constantly mounted? It seems like it would suck to have to install an OS on the 4200 rpm drive and then move it over to the external every time something goes wrong. Here are the links to possible drives I was looking at. Thanks!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822154726
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144187

Are all enclosures compatible? Thanks again!

[devo]

You might want to stick with the 7,2000RPM drive. Those 10,000RPM drives can be loud!

[Susurrus]

I would not recommend buying a 16Mb cache drive unless it's above 7200rpm, as aat 7200rpm and lower, there is a negligible difference in performance, as in rounding error.

You'd be better off buying and enclosure and putting in your own drive if you're worried about performance, because then you can choose exactly which drive you want. You won't find an enclosure running above 7200rpm drives stock, I don't think. I haven't seen one that even use the 16Mb cache drives.
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