External hard drives are a great way to expand your computer's storage capacity. These drives are a good choice if you have a computer where you can't easily add an internal hard drive or swap out existing drives for larger ones.
CNET How To – Making an External Hard Drive
There are a lot of advantages to building your own external hard drive. You can choose the size of the hard drive and the type of connections you want on your enclosure. You can also opt for an external enclosure which allows you to use all of these popular methods for connecting an external enclosure to a computer:
Nowadays, selecting a hard drive enclosure is easy. Aside from the physical size of the drive and what kind of connections you want on the enclosure, there isn’t much that differentiates one enclosure from another, other than build quality, reliability, and ease of assembly, which are often reflected in a product’s reviews.
You can use a drive that you already own, but don't use very much. You can also choose to buy a new drive and save money on a pre-built drive, because you assemble it yourself.