[Ben Müller]

Hi,

here again it depends on the drive.

most standard 2.5″ drives are using the power supplied by the USB port.

if you connect it via esata it will use an additional usb cable for power.

some more power hungry drives might need two usb ports to provide enough power. in this case the enclosure would use one usb cable for data and power plus one usb cable for additional power. in case of esata it would use esata for data and for example a usb y-cable for power (has two usb connectors on one side).

regards

[Ben Müller]

Hi there,

in terms of performance it depends on what you want – most of the already assambled externel hard drives use 5400 rpm hard drives in their enclosures.
This means they consume less power and are more silent.

a 7200rpm drive on the other hand would have faster access times.

so if you want to have fast access to the external drive i would suggest building your own drive with an enclosure and a hard drive.

an additional benefit is that you can use the external enclosure with multiple hard drives by just exchanging the drive . so there ould be no need for an additional enclosure (exchanging the hdd in a pre-assambled external hard drive can be tricky or even impossible because the enclosures of these are sometimes glued together.

as for the external enclosure i can recommend the ones by Icy Dock –

for examaple the MB559US:

https://icydock.com/product/mb559us-1sb.html

should you go for a 2.5″ drive which has the benefit that it is more portable and does not require an additional power brick i would suggest the MB668US:

https://icydock.com/product/mb668us-1sb.html

regards