Hi guys. Can someone explain to me (in the simplest terms possible) what an external enclosure is and what purpose it serves? I'm in the market for an external hard drive to record my music, I thought I could just plug it in and go, but apparently I need one of these things. Net searches aren't helping... any info would be great!

You can buy a hard drive as just a drive (and put it into your desktop), or you can buy an external harddrive, which is a regular hard drive that is mounted in a little box, also called enclosure, and has an internal connector to the hard drive that converts the regular drive connection to a USB or Firewire connector.

Examples would be:

External drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822101121
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822186152
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154294
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136321

Hard drive that needs to get mounted in an enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148373

You have to make sure, that the drive is properly working for you operating system (Windows or Mac), and that the connector is compatible with your computer (USB, USB2, Firewire400/800).