[scJazz]

The only saving grace for purchasing a boxed external hard drive is the backup/recovery software you usually get.

Approach 1) Save money, use time, no software = buy the drive and enclosure and put them together

Approach 2) Waste money, save time, get backup/recover software = buy a boxed LaCie or Maxtor hard drive.

Personally I like the Maxtor One-Touch for its' utterly painless backup system (push the button stupid!). This is what I use on the majority of my client installations.