Internal vs. External HDDs

[kinley3]

I've recently been incredibly fortunate enough to experience a hard drive failure on my desktop. I'm currently looking into buying a new one, but I'm torn between whether i should get an internal or an external one.

I was thinking some of you folks might have some opinions as to why one is better than the other. I've never been in the situation of having to get a new hard drive, so it seems to me that the only advantage externals would have over internals would be the fact that you can simply plug them into a USB port. Better for less experienced users, in other words. Or less hassle for anyone, for that matter.

[Smith6612]

Basically it's a matter of speed, accessibility and convenience. Internal drives are generally faster than say, the typical external USB drive by nature, but is of course not as accessible if you don't have hot swappable bays in your computer or need to pull it in a hurry (Internals unless they are hot swappable require a full shut down). The speed is obviously going to be a factor as unless you are using eSATA for data transfers, USB will cap you at around 20 or so Megabytes of throughput. Firewire will go a little higher though I don't see many of those disks around. eSATA will go as fast as the drive can read/write generally, unless you have a really crappy drive controller.

External hard drives are great to have around. I suppose it comes down to preference.

[vv.bbcc19]

I've recently been incredibly fortunate enough to experience a hard drive failure on my desktop. I'm currently looking into buying a new one, but I'm torn between whether i should get an internal or an external one.

I understand that it is unfortunate.But logic is this..
-OS should be on a latest technology FLASH harddrives(incredibly fast.) Keep nothing storage on them.Leave it only to installing programs.A 60GB flash drive costs around INR 10000 which is USD 200.
Then other drives will have all information.
Even if a harddrive crashes,nothing much happens to data inside.You can still retrieve a fair amount of data by a software that I used once.I can help you with.
PM Me as it against X10 rules that we post any such download links.I will email you the download link which is a third party link.Not mine any way.
Will this help?