Internal Hard Drives vs External, Pros and Cons?

[706]

Could anyone give me some advice on the pros and cons of internal vs external hard drives. I had a Western Digital 1 TB external hard drive, that unfortunately blew up causing me to lose all the data on it. The hard drive currently in my computer is getting full so I need to either buy another one, or get a new hard drive installed.

Of course an external hard drive has portability but I feel like an internal one may be a little more secure, I won't worry about it blowing up every time I plug in the power supply. Also I belive internal hard drives are cheaper. Are there any negatives to having large hard drives in your computer performance wise? I'm thinking something about the same size, 1 TB and it would probably be about half full. I worry that just browsing through that many files of that size may slow the computer down.

Also does anyone have any recommendations of internal or external hard drives. I understand there are different types of internal hard drives, but don't actually understand the differences. I have a Dell 0TP406 mainboard should that be necessary information.

 

[Yami]

Are there any negatives to having large hard drives in your computer performance wise? I'm thinking something about the same size, 1 TB and it would probably be about half full. I worry that just browsing through that many files of that size may slow the computer down.

No, there aren't really any negatives. And in fact larger hard drives tend to be newer and thus have better performance. And if you defrag it every so often then you won't need to worry about the performance of the drive.

 

[septic]

Basically, an external hd is just an internal w\ an enclosure. You can even build your own. Your bringing up 2 questions with your question. 1. Secure back-up 2. Everyday use speed. It comes down to how much you want to spend on insurance. If you have the time to manually back everything up, this will be the least expensive route. The more expesive and secure way is to have a dual back-up system. This would require setting up Raid to "mirror" your hd onto another internal hard drive, then manually off-load specific files to an external.
2. More advanced users than I partition their hard drive to put the OS up front to run faster. My experience with this is a friend had to format bc the used pc he purchased had everything going to the small partition, but many advanced users in these forums are partitioned. For me, I deem it unnecessary to partition as computers and OS' are so far advanced. Defragging alone (once a week) will help your OS find the files pretty fast. Mak213 had a real good write up on this somewhere.

 

[Harper]

Building your own external hard drive is better. At least you don't have to void warranties to trouble shoot those drives. Just above any thing exclosures that are completely plastic.

 

[706]

Not having to void a warranty would be quite useful, but I don't have all that much confidence in my skills to put an external drive together though I imagine it isn't too hard. I think I will go for an internal drive, seeing as through 3 or 4 computers I've never had a hard drive fail whereas my first external hard drive blew up.
However I'd still like some suggestions if people have any, I have a friend that has had multiple Seagate drives fail on him so suggests staying away from them. So what kind of brands do people find reliable?

 

[septic]

Western Digital are solid. There are different quality HDD's also. http://www.techist.com/forums/f75/hard-drive-219154/ < Here is a link to another thread that discusses this topic.

 

[patonb]

2. More advanced users than I partition their hard drive to put the OS up front to run faster. My experience with this is a friend had to format bc the used pc he purchased had everything going to the small partition, but many advanced users in these forums are partitioned. For me, I deem it unnecessary to partition as computers and OS' are so far advanced. Defragging alone (once a week) will help your OS find the files pretty fast. Mak213 had a real good write up on this somewhere.

Actually, this isn't why alot of peopl partition. Having your files on a seperatr partion than your OS is a very good idea/security.
If a virus eats your OS, or a bad update, your files are not lost. Reloading a OS is a snap, all drivers and the minor programs can be saved there for easy use.

Running my setup, os on 1 partion, and files on another allows me to reinbstall in under an hour from scratch.

 

[706]

It was actually a WD that blew up on me, but I'm hoping I just had some bad luck. I was looking at the WD 1TB Caviar Green drive, I don't need the higher performance or speed of the other WD drives, I'd rather something a little cheaper.

However I have 2 problems, firstly I don't know if my motherboard supports a second hard drive and if a SATA one at that. I can't seem to find any info on it on the net. Also I'm an Australian and the prices here are much higher despite the minimal difference in USD to AUD dollar these days. For example I see the WD 1TB HDD for 85 USD on newegg whereas here it's about 150 AUD. Does anyone know of any US computer stores that ship internationally? I mean I could spend 50 dollars on shipping and still come out ahead.

 

[septic]

Mak's 213 shopping megathread SATA>

 

[patonb]

You should ask keyboard Cowgirl and the other Aussies on here for the cheap places.