Hello Everyone,

I just registered on the site and looked at a number of threads and this place has some real good info and I will review a great deal. I have a brief question on (external hard drives).

I looked on the Newegg site and I need some real solid advice on what type to buy since my system is two years old. I have a internal hard drive of 120gb's and was thinking of getting something in the range of 300gb. I have USB ports and a firewire connection on my Shuttle computer. For the most part, I would use this hard drive to store gaming programs like patches and downloads plus a few movies.

Any recommendations on the ones to look at and purchase? Thanks and any other advice is greatly appreciated.

A firewire connection will be faster than USB 2.

Firewire beats USB, usually, not always. It depends on how many files, what size, speed of CPU, etc.
I've been reading Scott Mueller's book "Upgrading and repairing PC's", the 2007 edition. He set up two different systems, each of them with both USB and FireWire. USB was winning in one, FireWire was winning in the other. If I remember right USB was doing better than FireWire on the system with the faster CPU. His conclusion was that you just can't tell which is faster unless you have a specific system and you measure.

I'd go for something with eSATA + (USB or Firewire or both). Seagate FreeAgent Pro, or some WD product.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136182
eSATA will be faster than either FireWire or USB. If your current computer doesn't have eSATA or at least a SATA port, you can use it with USB, and your next computer will definitely be able to use eSATA.

Now I've also learned something new

try running a test with other tasks being done at the same time.

I say make your own external hard drive, get a sata hd and put it into an e-sata external enclosure. If you need to go out and buy an e-sata controller card, you can find one for $30 or less. I like the Apricorn enclosures and Seagate Hard drives.

I can't try with Firewire, my GA-P35C-DS3R doesn't support it.
With USB I definitely see a slow down, especially if I also have another big copy operation in progress. Maybe it is USB's fault, but it could also be that Windows is not smart enough to do two copy operations efficiently at the same time.

I like that eSATA enclosure idea a lot.

thanks guys with the assistance. I don't have a sata connection in my compter sinc eits about 3 yrs old. So, I'll buy a hd that will be able to handle it on my next upgrade. I just want to use for downloading files , movies nothing that spectacular. This is great help and I appreciate it