I'm looking to either buy an external HDD or make my own. I'm looking to get a high capacity drive (atleast 500 GB) to backup all my media files. Would you recommend me to buy one or make my own? If buying my own, which hard drive and enclosure? PS.... I've previously made my own external HDD with an old 80 GB HDD from a desktop computer. I put it in a Vantec NexStar 3 enclosure. It works good, but transfer rates for it are quite slow using USB.
External hard drive enclosures are simple to make. Get something based around the Icy Box IB-351 enclosure. I personally recommend the Western Digital WD5000AAKS and Samsung HD501LJ drives. (Just note that the Samsung drive is not suitable to sit on a desk to the high level of vibrations, unless you don't mind a lot of noise). You can use the notably slow method of USB, or if you have a spare Serial ATA port in your PC, you could use external Serial ATA, by getting a S-ATA version of the Icy Box, and one of these http://www.cable-trader.co.uk/images/Single port SATA interface (L type) with backplate.jpg This method will get you the full transfer speed of the drive (Above 70MB/s when new) and actually works out cheaper.