External Hard Drive Pros & Cons: Buyer's Guide

[quasi426]

I am thinking about getting an external hard drive, (just buying a harddrive and case). Can you guys give me some pros and cons of an external hard drive compared to an internal one.

 

[Pengwuino]

Well if your "just buying a hard drive and a case", i assume you mean SCSI or SATA which is probably the same thing as getting an internal drive.

If you get an actual external hard drive, it'll be USB or Firewire. The disadvantages are that it is a bit slower and doesn't access as quickly, it also needs its own power cords :(. Pro: they are portable obviously, some have media readers installed on them... and well, they are huge chunks of memory you can take with you hehe.

 

[The_Professional]

I recommend Western Digital and Seagate. I've had my WD for 5 years now. And firewire is faster than USB 2.0 soo if you have both ports go for firewire.

 

[Pengwuino]

I got this 250gb western digital media center ext. It is incredible...

 

[PerennialII]

... been using external Firewire drives for a couple of years as temp data storages, the latest for example Firewire 800 interfaces provide the necessary speed to utilize the drive capacities well, currently have one 500 Gb and one 1 Tb drive which occationally carry around. Been very satisfied with them.

 

[imabug]

I am thinking about getting an external hard drive, (just buying a harddrive and case). Can you guys give me some pros and cons of an external hard drive compared to an internal one.

Internal: Need room in your computer. If you have an open drive bay, free power connector and IDE/SATA/SCSI port free in your computer, you're fine.
External: Need space on your desk, a free SCSI, USB or IEEE-1394 (Firewire) port and an open outlet on your power bar. Only a little bit slower if it's attached to a USB 2 port (a lot slower if it's only on a USB 1 port), but usually not significantly noticable.

Desk space for me is usually at a premium, so my first choice is to go for internal drives.

 

[-Job-]

I think price is to be considered. Internal hard drives are considerably cheaper (with more storage space). I've looked at the 1Tb external hardrives but last time i checked they were going at about $900, i guess it depends on what your needs are.

 

[Pengwuino]

Oh yah, price/space is a big difference as well. I've seen 2.5gb/$1 internal 7200rpm sata drives while I am probably only getting 1.5gb/$1 7200 external at the most (as of about 6 months ago).