Question on External HD's

[mrmark27]

Im buying a laptop primarily for watching movies on. On my desktop, I have a 1TB HD dedicated to my movies and I as planning to transfer a bunch of those to an external to carry around for my laptop. I was hoping to use an old 500GB 7200rpm IDE HD that I had lying around with an exernal enclosure, however when I was formatting that HD and then transfering some stuff to it, the write speeds seemed to be REALLY slow. If I were to buy a new external HD, would it be faster than what I have now, or is this a downside of dealing with externals/usb's?

Thanks!

 

[TheViper]

The limitations of USB would probably negate any speed boosts from using a new external SATA drive unless you have eSATA or get a cheap eSATA PCI card..

 

[mrmark27]

It does have an eSATA/USB port, as well as a firewire port

 

[TheViper]

Then if your PC has an eSATA port (or don't mind buying a PCI eSATA card) that would be the way to go.