External or Internal harddrive?

better use internal...external i assume using usb2 connection? the speed is too slow compared with internal. Dunno about e-sata connection though...

what do you mean by speed? tell me more before i purchase

the data transfer rate from the harddisk to the system...the usb2 is not faster than if you use sata or ide connection (internal harddrive).

A normal hdd will get to ~100MB/s. Usb2 max is 30MB/s.

Another vote for internal. Externals are mostly for backups. If you need to keep accessing the files on the drive, internal would make more sense. Also, SATA is faster then USB.

Oh I get it now...

Depends on the usb and sata version. Usb2 is 480Mb/s, usb3 is 5Gb/s. Sata2 is 3Gb/s, sata3 is 6Gb/s. Those are bits not bytes. Sata 2,3 and usb3 can let the hdd achieve it's max speed.

However, no device will hit those max bandwidth speeds because of overhead. (If you convert usb2; 480Mb/s is 60MB/s but devices will only peak to 40MB/s usually only sustaining 30MB/s. Same goes for sata, sata 2 is 3Gb/s=375MB/s but an ssd will only hit 280MB/s on it.)