1TB drives can be regularly had for around $80 nowadays. But Newegg is throwing in a $40 Rosewill RX-Du100 2.5- and 3.5-inch SATA to USB 2.0 dock for your fun and profit.
So not only do you get a Samsung 1TB HDD for $80 – and who doesn’t like 1TB drives – but these docks are super convenient. All you need to do is slap in any SATA HDD and the dock turns it into an external drive. The dock does require its own power btw. The solution might not be the most sexy solution, but it may just be the least expensive 1TB external solution available.
Remember the old Syquest (50MB!) removable SCSI drives? No, I didn’t think so… :>)
Anyway, I’ve been using a SATA dock similar to the above for some time now and it makes an excellent modern version of the Syquest.
Since I bought my Western Digital 4TB ShareSpace NAS, I’ve dismembered my 2 each 1TB and 2 each 500GB MyBooks and taken the drives to use with the SATA dock as ’scratch’ and ‘transfer’ disks.
One bonus is that the problems I suffered with the MySpace enclosure USB and eSATA logic has entirely gone away and the drives now work reliably.