I own one of the maxtor one touch external drive with 120GB sell price was about 150, aprox i cant remember. it works wonderful, the only problem I had was in one of my system if you restarted the system it wont load the OP, until you turned off the external drive. but in another system it would not have the same behavior. the tranfer speed is good on usb2 and it has backward compatibility so you can connect it to any machine that does not habe usb2. rate is lower but acceptable. you can hardly hear any noise from the disk and the stability is optimal.

This article/review is a great help in deciding what type/format of External Hard Drive might be appropriate for one's computer system.

However, I think that it would be equally as interesting if this same type of expose' focused on External "Enclosures" - filled with a High-End Western Digital or Maxtor EIDE Hard Drive, including the following:

1. WiebeTech Firewire 800/USB2.0 ComboDock (Model #CDK - COMBO);

2. WiebeTech SingleBay Dock 400 Firewire Storage (Model #SBD - 0 INFOTRAY);

3. Macalley 3.5" USB2.0/Firewire 800 Aluminum Enclosure (Model #PHR - 100 ACB).

I suspect that with the onslaught of SATA and other mainboard- changing technologies, that IDE External "Enclosures" will soon become a logical and thrifty upgrade for most computer systems instituted before H2-2004.

Thank you.