External hard drive for expanding iTunes library?

If properly constructed an external hard drive does not need a fan for cooling. LaCie, G-Force and others make metal drive enclosures that are quite efficient at ducting heat away from the drive unit. Since these enclosures depend on passive heat transfer it is important that you place them where they will receive ample air flow and not operate them in a high ambient temperature environment.

metal drive enclosures that are quite efficient at ducting heat away from the drive unit.

While I agree that some cases are better than others, it is indisputable that a drive will be warmer in a sealed box than in an enclosure that forces air across it.

If heat is the enemy of all electronic devices, which it most definitely is, it makes sense to run them as cool as reasonably possible.

I'm using eight 300 gig drives and had one of them fail recently after less than a year of use. I'm blowing some air across mine.

I've had too many external drives fail--three 250GB drives by Lacie and one by Maxstor. I just do not believe those drives are designed to be on 24/7.

I highly recommend the Terastation RAID boxes. The 1TB version is down to $600, and nets you about 700GB with RAID5 protection. I used to run a commercial RAID drive, which sounded like a 747 taking off and I had to put it in a soundproof enclosure in my garage. The Terastation is very quiet, and I'm just fine with it sitting on the shelf across the room.

I agree with Edesilva that an NAS RAID array is a good way to go. If I had to do over I would go that route.

I think it is interesting that Michael has declared hard drives to be extremely reliable based on his experience and Edesilva has declared external drives to be inherently unreliable based on his. While I don't think either one has enough data based on these personal experiences to back up their claims about these devices as a whole, there is an overwhelming body of evidence that finds hard drives unreliable enough that it is considered foolish to operate without a backup.

It's also interesting to note that the actual hard drive in an external drive is exactly the same drive that is used internaly, the difference being the case, the interface (usb or firewire or ethernet) and the power supply which is usually a wall wart. If you visit Audio Asylum's PC forum you see many declarations supporting the idea that external drives are unreliable. But why should that be if they are the same drives used internally? Could it be the heat?

Some of those failures which are attributed to the drives are actually due to the interface or the wall wart. I've had the interface fail in 2 of those cheap $29 cases and would have tossed a perfectly good drive if I hadn't removed the drive to test it.

I purchased the G-Drive for my iTunes library and returned it because it was noisier than my OWC Mercury Elite Pro (300 gig) that I use for back up. So I purchased another OWC Elite-AL Pro 500 for less money than the G-Drive and now use it for my iTunes music library. I'm very happy with it so far. But my primary concern was the noise, so I can't comment on the reliability (yet). From my experience, you can hear the spinning of the HD on all external drives, but the OWC was definitely quieter than the G-Drive.