Recently I’ve come across a bunch of articles on how to build your own external drive, which is interesting because there are some perfectly good pre-built external drives available already. But after some investigation, it turns out there are some big benefits to building your own. Read on to find out more.

If you do just want to buy a pre-built one, be sure to check out PCWorld’s list of recommended external drives .

1. You can save money

The cost savings can be quite big compared to buying a large-capacity ready-made drive. For example, choosing a component like the Seagate IronWolf 8TB 3.5-inch HDD to go inside a Orico 3.5-inch hard disk enclosure costs $198 all up from Amazon. By comparison, a ready-made comparable 8TB external drive retails for $280 – so that’s a saving of $

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