Just getting up and running on DVD burning, etc., and know that I need more space. I have an 80gig in my Dell 4600, but my case won't hold another drive.

I'm thinking of 120 or larger for a second drive. My (dumb)questions are:

1. Should I buy a regular drive and put in a firewire enclosure?
2. What size and brand would be best? I'm familiar with several, but need advice.
3. I see some are sold as a package with the drive and enclosure, but want to do it right.
4. I believe for proper dvd burning you need a second drive or at least 100 gigs to spare.(please correct me if I am wrong)

Advice very much appreciated. Thanks!!

A firewire enclosure kit with a drive you buy is fine.....and firewire is the way to go....but you may wish to consider getting a combo usb2/firewire enclosure just for portability.

100gig is not needed for ripping and burning, you should however have at min 5-10 gig free for the process, and then whatever amount you need if you choose to keep those rips on your hard drive (4 to 9gig per movie uncompressed) to watch on pc...ie, whatever your wallet can handle..

I personally like Seagate and IBM/Hitatchi, but any "brand name drive will do" just make sure it's udma100+ at 7200rpm. Alot of high capicity name brand drives that are sold "cheap" are at 5400rpm, you do not want them.

As for ready made external units.......I can tell you personally, I've had bad luck with Buslink products, but these were USB2 only devices.

Good Luck and let us know how you make out on your project..

Thanks very much for the reply. That hels me a lot. If I am making backups of dvd's, don't I need to copy to the drive and then burn the disc. I have two drives, a Plextor Premium cd burner, and a Plextor PX-708 for burning dvd's.

I thought I had to copy to the drive before burning the disc and that it was not possible to burn "on the fly"??

burn on the fly is not really recommended.......it's best if you rip the disc to you hdd..........either way.........if your not storing them in a hdd.......10gig free is plenty...........if your hard drive is fat32.....you may run into issues....4 gig limitation.......but past that......your on the right track....

I've never ripped a dvd ISO on a fat32 drive, but I'd imagine that most programmes have features to split the files above certain sizes.
Go for a firewire case with the oxford 911 chipset, that's the best one there is and gives terrific transfer rates. As for a hard drive, make sure u get one with fluid dynamic bearings (or some other sort of fluid bearings) for quietness. That's about it really.... Have fun

I can recommend the 120gig Maxtor 7200rpm ATA 133 8MB cache HDD. I use it as my main HDD in my computer.

Please keep in mind also......The "project" is not limited to 4 gig under fat32......just no single file in the project can exceed 4gig. ofcourse....regardless or your filesystem, when your ready to burn your project to dvd-/+r or rw...the entire project must be less than 4.3 gig. thats where transcoders like dvdshrink become useful.

When dual layer becomes mainstream, and we can actually burn 9 gig on one set top playable disk cheaply......this will be a thing of the past.....for a short while.....