Second Hard Drive

[TheBiggmann]

I'm running out of space on my current hard drive and am looking into a second one. I think i could prefer and external as I'm going off to college soon. Is there any advantages/disadvantages with going internal vs external? Also can I just plug it in (external) or install it (external) and just rip all my music and dvd's to that drive then and still access them or is there some other special thing I need to do. I want to be able to access the other drive while I'm on my current one if that's possible, I just want that one to store all my media stuff on.

 

[sutahz]

Sounds like you know what you want and how to get.
I'd go internal if I were you but if you think you want/need an external go for it. External drives have shorter warranties and fail a lot from what I can tell. Its not really the drive that fails its the SATA->USB/Firewire/NIC converter that fails, but the drive has a higher chance to fail as its enclosed in a very small space w/ poor ventalation usually.
Another option is to buy the hdd and enclosure seperatly. This way your hdd gets the longer warranty and should "it" fail you can open it back up again and see what failed, the hdd or enclosure.

 

[agathodaimon]

If you constantly access your files, then I'd go internal.
Otherwise, if it's simply backing things up, or having files "around" that you would need time to time, go with an external... That way you won't have to have it running constantly.

 

[TheBiggmann]

Yeah it'd be a constantly running/accessing thing. So can I just put the internal in and use that as my destination for media stuff then while still operating off of my main one? Am I gonna be able to save all my music there and play it off of itunes while operating off my main?

 

[Germonicus]

Yeah,adding an extra HDD is just a matter of installing it,formatting it and then you can access it just as easily as a DVD/CD drive.You'll be able to use your old HDD as the boot drive and keep the OS you have installed.