External vs Internal

[andyfairall]

Im building a new system and was wondering if there were any benefits to using an external HD vs an internal one or vice-vesa? Im looking at a budget of about 100$ so SSD are pretty much out of the question

 

[tecmo34]

It you are using a single drive setup, I would go with the internal drive (Samsung Spinpoint F3R 1TB). You will get better performance running off the motherboard SATA port versus external connection, like USB (an eSATA will be close but not worth it... IMO).

 

[FreeDataRecovery]

Go internal. What you lose in portability you make up for in speed and reliabilty.

For example I had a client the other day her cat knocked over her external drive and it crashed to the floor. The drive is now dead. Not sure about the cat.

 

[andyfairall]

nice

 

[sminlal]

Use internal drives for files that will always be online.

Use external drives for backups or data transfers where the drive needs to have the ability to be removed from the machine.

 

[ssddx]

always use internal drives for your boot disk and storage disks you wanted associated with the computer.

externals are meant for either a backup disk, network accessable storage disk, or portable disk to take with you on the go. they are not suggested to replace the role of an internal drive.

if you go with a western digital caviar black, go with the 1tb model instead of the 1.5tb as the latter one has issues (3 dead drives on me so far!) i've heard decent things about the spinpoints.

 

[Vay]

With an internal HDD, your mom certainly wouldn't touch it and break it like she did with my external HDD.