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External HDD Recomendations

WD Elements SE 1TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive »www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···-text-_- very stable getting 120/MBs.

Looks OK, but I'm looking for a larger HDD 3Tb or 4Tb with USB 3.0

Here is a decent drive »www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···FullInfo

reply to CCat
Infect i own 2TB eSATA or USB 2.0 capable Seagate drive going strong for 2 years.

reply to CCat
You're going to have some difficulty finding such products, at least ones which are well-designed, because USB 3.0 is still incredibly new.

The only product I can recommend at this point which would do what you want would be the Icydock ICYRaid MB662U3-2S. This model supports USB 3.0, two 3.5" disks (up to 4TB each), enclosure-level RAID but also supports JBOD (each disk appears separately on the bus), and is powered off of an external AC transformer (there's no avoiding this given the power requirements). It has lots of other features (all controlled via DIP switches):

»www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=160

However, this product won't be available until next month -- like I said, USB 3.0 is very new and you need to be patient.

A co-worker of mine had the USB 2.0 version of the above and I poked around with it for some time to see how it behaved. I was fairly impressed, but I myself tend to prefer native SATA connections.

If you need something right now, you should look into buying an enclosure that supports eSATA.

If you choose the eSATA route, DO NOT consider one of these, as they violate specifications and are commonly the cause for CRC errors and drives falling off the bus. Get a proper PCIe eSATA controller. For inexpensive controllers I recommend, see here:

»Re: Motherboard layout for HP DL360 G6...

Finally, when it comes to picking hard disks, I recommend you stay away from models which are "Green" (e.g. WD Green disks, Samsung EcoGreen, and most of Seagate's present models). Many of these drives will emit audible clicking as a result of excessive head parking and suffer from what the Internet calls the "LCC issue". I tend to recommend WD's Red drives and for many reasons, but ultimately what you buy + tolerate is up to you -- not everyone is me. The maximum size available for the WD Red is 3TB.

Good luck with your purchase.
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

reply to CCat
koitsu has a good point. USB 3.0 is new, and eSATA was around for quite some time