Help--External Hardrive purchase

I want to purchase an external hard-drive to install a linux operation system. The external hard-drive would have to be self-powered(not require an external power supply), have a minimum of 160Gb and would serve as a backup to my internal hard-disk.

I was considering my options-

1)ESATA HARDDRIVE- i have a PCMCIA slot which I can use as a PCMCIA to ESATA converter.

Probems with this---
1a)Will the PCMCIA slot limit bandwidth? ESATA has a bandwidth of 3000Mb/s.
1b) ESATA needs an external power supply??...Any ESATA drives with no external power supply to be released??

2)Firewire 800 External Hardrive- i have a PCMCIA slot which I can use as a PCMCIA to Firewire 800 converter.

Probems with this---
2a)Will the PCMCIA slot limit bandwidth? Firewire 800 has a bandwidth of 798Mb/s
2b) Is the Firewire 800 bandwidtho of 798Mb/s be enough to run a fast present release Linux system ?

3)Firewire 400 External Hardrive- i have a Firewire 400 port.

Probems with this---
3a) Is the Firewire 400 bandwidth of 350Mb/s be enough to run a fast present release Linux system ?

4)Firewire 3200 External Hardrive-Is anything out???Is it expensive?

I would really appreciate it if you could relate to any of this.
If you have any other options i could use, please let me know.
Thanks a lot guys.

 

You need to get an external harddrive which uses a laptop harddrive.
All desktop harddrive based externals require more energy than USB can provide.
ESATA does not carry power through the port, so you are going to need a power supply.
Yes, the PCMCIA bus is going to limit the speed of your esata drive. PCMCIA is slower than USB buy 80megabits/sec.

I would go for just a standard esata drive, and carry around the power adaptor. Its not that much of a hassel.
If it is a hassel, than you have to use a usb based external notebook based harddrive.

K-TRON

 

Hey KTRON
Does it make sense to go for an ESATA drive when the PCMCIA bus is slower than a USB BUS?
Shouldnt i just go for USB 2 self-powered external drive??
I only have a PCMCIA port not an ESATA port for my DELL D630 laptop

and will linux run fast on this system off the external harddrive?

QUOTE---
"""I would go for just a standard esata drive, and carry around the power adaptor. Its not that much of a hassel"""

 

If you have a 32bit cardbus slot in your laptop, I think esata would be a good option. a cardbus slot will allow for full esata speeds, since it runs off a pcie hub.
If you have just pcmcia, than just use standards USB.

You want a usb2 self powered drive, which is why I mentioned that Esata does not provide power.

The max speed of the external will be goverened by the USB port, which is about 28-30mb/sec continuous write speed. A standard high density 5400rpm drive inside a laptop can do 40-55mb/sec average, so you may be better off using the internal drive, and partitioning it for another operating system.

But if you want an external, a 160gb self powered drive will be fine.
It may not be extremely fast, but hey it would be nice.

Something like this would be perfect:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822100026

Make sure the drive you get, says "no external power required"

K-TRON

 

Doesnt the PCMCIA SLOT have a 133MegaByte(mB) bus speed?

I am not sure if i have a 32 bit card bus or PCMCIA card slot. How do i find out?

I have a dell D630 laptop? DO you know about this laptop?