External hard disk drive?

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abc123kes

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First of all, hello everyone!

I have a Dell XPS laptop and use an 80 GB external hard drive for storage. I actually found a site that has the drive which can be found here:
Toshiba (MK8032GAX) 80 GB IDE Hard Drive Product Reviews and Price Comparison - Epinions.com

But I am running out of space and was thinking of buying a new drive, say at least 250 GB.

I checked with the local computer store and they had 320GB for CAD 72.00, which I found quite reasonable.

The only thing is I am not sure if I should get SATA or IDE, which the guy at the store asked me and I had no idea what the difference was. I think the one I have right now is IDE (it says on the site I posted above) but I don't know much more than that.

My main concern is speed, as I will be using the new one to store movies and it would be better if I could just watch the movies straight from the drive rather than having to copy it onto the pc because the speed is too slow.

Also, as I have a laptop, it would have to connect via a USB port, so I would need an enclosure (or hard drive box), which I am aware of!

So any advice on would be much appreciated :cool:
 
If you have USB 2.0 you have a max of 480 mb/s. Sata gives you either 150 or 300 mb/s and IDE gives you either 100 or 133 mb/s.

Long story short use Sata because it will use more of the available 480.
 
If you have USB 2.0 you have a max of 480 mb/s. Sata gives you either 150 or 300 mb/s and IDE gives you either 100 or 133 mb/s.

Long story short use Sata because it will use more of the available 480.

Thanks, I will keep that in mind.

Btw, is there any way to know if my USB is 1.0 or 2.0? =/
 
If copying even a small file (e.g. 5Mb) takes a very long time, you've got 1.0
If it copies pretty much straight away (within a few seconds) you've got 2.0
 
If copying even a small file (e.g. 5Mb) takes a very long time, you've got 1.0
If it copies pretty much straight away (within a few seconds) you've got 2.0

For a 700mb file, it takes about 30-50 seconds.. so I suppose thats 2.0. Thanks =)
 
Yes that would be USB 2.0 for a time frame like that with a file size like that.
 
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