Which is a better hard drive?

[sniggitydiggity]

I figure this is the best place to come. I have room for an internal hard drive, but I'm leaning more towards an external hard drive. What are your opinions as far as each? I download lots of live music shows that are huge in size and excess space quickly gets eaten up. Anyone have a preference and why as to internal or external?

Thanks
Yes, I'm a nooB, but we all were once, right?

 

[Mik3y]

only benefit of external is that you can move it around easily and connect to different comps. internal is stationary.

 

[Erasmus-X]

It sounds like you're primarily doing video and music storage for playback purposes. As long as you're not doing anything critical with it like gaming or say, video editing, an external drive is fine. If your PC has a Firewire port, I'd opt for a drive that supports that interface (much faster).

 

[sniggitydiggity]

Thanks, fellas.

 

[sniggitydiggity]

Also, if I were gaming (as I am actually a big gamer) why is it not recommended to use an external for gaming, Erasmus?

 

[zzzz]

internal transfer rate is faster than external.
And you want your boot drive to be internal too for the same reason.

 

[Polishwonder74]

Yeah, you give up a lot of speed when you go external. I wouldn't want to run an OS on an external, but they're super for portability. Plus I think it's a lot tougher to boot from an external. Oh, and they're also good for backing up important stuff since you can put your goodies on them and then hide them in a closet inside a faraday cage, or fireproof safe.

If you try to actually run your computer off of one you'll pull your hair out.

 

[Cerb]

If you plan on moving it around, external. Otherwise, internal.

As for gaming and external HDs, USB eats up CPU power, so that could make a difference. If you wanted to avoid that, go Firewire. Also, if you want decent transfer rates external, go Firewire.

 

[SonicIce]

I thought USB 2.0 was slightly faster than firewire?

 

[bluewall21]

Also, internal drives usually last longer due to the protection of your case.

 

[Devcon]

Why don't you just get an enclosure and put an internal drive in it? That's what I did for my laptop, so when I eventually get around to buying a desktop, I can just toss the drive into it. Not to mention, decent enclosures are pretty cheap, and have worked flawlessly, in my case, as an external HD.

 

[clamum]

Unless you need to be moving the drive around all the time, I don't see a reason to get an external drive.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
I thought USB 2.0 was slightly faster than firewire?

The specification is faster, the real performance for mass storage and other data streams is better with firewire.

I think it's related to USB being more for 'lots' of devices getting along well rather than for one fast device.

 

[Cerb]

Actually, there are as many FW devices, too (though they do appear to be one device per port). I think I found a big difference when looking at enclosures...

For FW parts, you get the same chipsets as in controller cards. IE, same chip controlling the FW device as the 'host' controller, particularly if you check the NEC and Oxford ones. For USB it's just a bridge. Very SCSI-like, IMO. The devices themselves are far more capable, and use less host processing power...unfortunately that translates into more required transistors, more cost...then you have that it's a smaller part of the market, raising the price again. OTOH, it also appears to be like SCSI in another respect: naysayers keep saying it will die, but then it doesn't, because many people need it .

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: bluewall21
Also, internal drives usually last longer due to the protection of your case.

If you don't abuse it while it is on, I doubt that's the situation. They may last longer due to better cooling in a typical case, though.

 

[billandopus]

Stationary - internal drive
Mobility and flexibilty - internal drive with an external enclosure like an ADS.

Fits both HDD and rom drives and you can find up to 1394b versions which support 800mb/s for pc and mac for crazy flexibility. Ends up being the same price as an external drive but with the ability to swap out components and to keep up with technology.

Dedicated external drives look nice but are extremely expensive relatively and have operational issues at times.

 

[billandopus]

Stationary - internal drive
Mobility and flexibilty - internal drive with an external enclosure like an ADS.

Fits both HDD and rom drives and you can find up to 1394b versions which support 800mb/s for pc and mac for crazy flexibility. Ends up being the same price as an external drive but with the ability to swap out components and to keep up with technology.

Dedicated external drives look nice but are extremely expensive relatively and have operational issues at times.