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Bullitt · 11-27-2007, 12:55 PM

External is convenient since you aren't required to open your case and install a bare drive, ground yourself, etc. I got a 500gb LaCie external that is perfect for me and my ridiculous amounts of photos for around $100 by shopping around a bit online at places like Tigerdirect, Newegg, and Buy.com. Given the info that UT and others gave me about hard drive life in terms of time the disk spends spinning, and also you saying that is for photos, I would opt for an external that you can turn off when not in use over an internal which will be on whenever the computer is turned on.

I also made sure when I purchased my new computer last winter that it had a dvd burner so I can make backups of all my photos separate from from my two hard drives. That's also something to consider since your average blank cd holds around 700mb of data whereas a single layer blank dvd holds around 4.7gb.

In terms of speed, externals are a tad slower because they have to run their data through USB. I've read, but have no experience, that firewire is faster than usb 2.0, and some externals come with a firewire connection. Though that is more a Mac than a PC thing, but some PC's do have the connections. That all being said, I have no trouble streaming video from my usb 2.0 connected hard drive.

11-27-2007, 12:55 PM	#2
Bullitt This is a fully functional babe lair Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Akron, OH Posts: 2,324	External is convenient since you aren't required to open your case and install a bare drive, ground yourself, etc. I got a 500gb LaCie external that is perfect for me and my ridiculous amounts of photos for around $100 by shopping around a bit online at places like Tigerdirect, Newegg, and Buy.com. Given the info that UT and others gave me about hard drive life in terms of time the disk spends spinning, and also you saying that is for photos, I would opt for an external that you can turn off when not in use over an internal which will be on whenever the computer is turned on. I also made sure when I purchased my new computer last winter that it had a dvd burner so I can make backups of all my photos separate from from my two hard drives. That's also something to consider since your average blank cd holds around 700mb of data whereas a single layer blank dvd holds around 4.7gb. In terms of speed, externals are a tad slower because they have to run their data through USB. I've read, but have no experience, that firewire is faster than usb 2.0, and some externals come with a firewire connection. Though that is more a Mac than a PC thing, but some PC's do have the connections. That all being said, I have no trouble streaming video from my usb 2.0 connected hard drive. __________________ Kiss my white Irish ass. Last edited by Bullitt; 11-27-2007 at 01:04 PM.