Tutorial: Building an external hard drive

Sick of backing up all your data on to CD's and DVD's? Not enough dough to buy a portable hard drive? Then this is the perfect solution.
You can build your own portable hard drive for about 50% cheaper than you can buy it.
And best of all, it is one of the easiest things to do and takes about 5-10 minutes.
This tutorial will show you exactly how to.

Step 1: Preparation
Get a Hard Drive (naturally):
I recommend getting a good quality, high capacity 7200RPM IDE hard drive.
There is no huge price difference between a low and a high quality drive, and a high capacity hdd will not cost that much more than a low capacity one (unless you're buying a 750gb Seagate raptor:P).
7200RPM because they are significantly cheaper than 10000rpm ones - and in practice there is no noticeable difference.
An IDE drive because once again, there is no noticeable difference between IDE and SATA + the case will be a lot cheaper.
IDE also because IDE is compatible with all systems meaning there is no chance that you will need to buy a eSATA port.
The cache, should be 8mb, since - once again - there is little (if any) price difference.
Something like a Western digital 200gb drive is very good (see:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16822144129).

Also you will need to buy an external case.

I recommend an aluminium USB 2.0 one - aluminium due to better heat disapation, and USB2.0 since there is no significant speed difference between USB 2.0 and Firewire + USB 2.0 is a lot cheaper and compatible with all computers.
Cases range from $20 to $100 (for a cheapy look on eBay).
Naturally you need an IDE case, if your making an IDE drive and SATA for a SATA Drive.
Also I recommend one that supports plug and play and hotswap, to make use that bit simpler.
Something like the i-rocks IR-9400C is a very nice case for a reasonable price (see: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16817201012).
The case will come with all cables etc, so you shouldn