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    Internal vs. External HDD's

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by purplegreendave, Dec 19, 2007.

  1. purplegreendave

    purplegreendave Has a notebook.

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    purplegreendave, Dec 19, 2007
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  2. justanormalguy

    justanormalguy Notebook Consultant

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    Which internal drive are you talking about? And USB is REALLY slow for HDDs...3.5" internal drives are very cheap.
     
    justanormalguy, Dec 19, 2007
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  3. Padmé

    Padmé NBR Super Pink Princess

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    If he's talking about a laptop, he can't use the 3.5 internals.
     
    Padmé, Dec 19, 2007
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  4. DMANbluesfreak

    DMANbluesfreak Notebook Consultant

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    A 2.5" laptop drive must fit a lot more storage into a smaller space, than a 3.5" drive. The transfer speed will be much faster, too.

    However, if you are only using the HDD to store things such as videos music, etc, you may be better off with the external since it's cheaper. If you need the extra space for things like games or programs, then the internal will be a better choice since the speed will be much higher.
     
    DMANbluesfreak, Dec 19, 2007
    #4
  5. justanormalguy

    justanormalguy Notebook Consultant

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    Errr, based on this he DOES NOT own a laptop. That's why I said a 3.5" drive. If it was a laptop 2.5" that's another story...
     
    justanormalguy, Dec 19, 2007
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  6. D3X

    D3X the robo know it all

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    Well your comparing a 3.5" drive to 2.5" drive. So there are a few factors here, generally a 3.5" drive is cheaper than a notebook drive. Ontop of that the USB external is going to be much slower given their connection bandwidth limitations (i believe 20MB/sec) compared the internal IDE/SATA which is upto 100MB/sec(based on the fastest 3.5" drive, fastest 2.5" is around 60MB/sec avg speed). Both Firewire and USB external harddrives are going to limit your harddrive speeds. Unless your notebook has an external ESATA port then you can probably have to get an external USB/Firewire drive. Generally I would recommend just upgrading your existing harddrive to a 7200RPM 2.5" IDE or SATA(depending on what you have) hard drive and then purchasing an external USB 2.5" case for your old 60GB drive for additional storage. This will increase your storage problem as well as increase your laptop performance...

    The slowest component in any notebook is your hard disk, so upgrading that will give you better performance benefits..
     
    D3X, Dec 19, 2007
    #6