I want a 2 TB eSATA drive that will be the back up to my internal 2 TB drive. I will keep the eSATA drive off site in a Tier 3 data center locker and bring it home every once in a while to back up my system.

While looking around on newegg, I don't see much of a selection. There are eSATA external drives and eSATA enclosures which would then require me to buy an internal drive as well.

Any recommendations on a solution? (enclosure vs a standard external, or different models/brands?)

bump

why are you so fixed on esata. It's not like the transfer rates are that much better. In back up, it is not speed that is king, but efficiency.

Actually, I'm not "so fixed" on it.

In my original post I had a paragraph asking people to let me know if eSATA isn't that great but I erased it a half hour ago because I thought that it made my post sound confusing.



Is eSATA not efficient? I've never heard of it not being efficient ever.

I figured that since the price wouldn't be a whole lot different and the data rates are faster than USB 2.0, that I could save hours over the long run when doing backups.

Do you disagree?

eSATA is much, much faster than USB2, so you will save time. With this Lacie Drive you can test it yourself as it has eSATA and USB2 connectivity packaged in a screaming orange safety jacket suitable for transport to and from an industrial data center.

I have been looking at that model for the past month. I'm always leery when a product only has a couple reviews though.

I just bought a Vantec eSATA USB3 enclosure and 2TB Western Digital which is all good, with transfer rates good enough for banging sliders around in Lightroom without appreciable lag.

Thank you for the input.

I've never seen that brand, I'll look it up on Newegg.

Try Cool Drives they have all kinds of enclosers with mutiple I/O per.

I would buy closure and hard drive separately. Then you can be sure that you can easily change another drive inside if needed. It used to be also that internal harddrives had better warranty than external ones for the same price, although I am not sure if it is still like that.

If you can afford it I actually recommend a closure that has both eSata and USB3, then you could use it almost anywhere and always get the optimal speed. Although such closures are still very rare and expensive, I did see one in internet but it was not available yet in my country.

If it's for backups then a RAID enclosure might be a good idea. I have a RAID 1 enclosure with 2 2TB drives inside it. Okay it was a bigger outlay, but it adds that extra layer of redundancy so I don't lose my sessions

Either way, buy a good drive and a good enclosure rather than a premade. You'll save money and get a better device