whats better internal or external hard drive?

Answer 1

It depends on how you will be using the drive. An internal drive is best for everyday usage. There is no degradation of speed. An external drive is usually used for back-up and long term storage. The two perform the exact same function. The difference is that an external is outside the tower of your computer. I have also noticed that the transfer rate for information to an external drive is slower than an internal drive hooked up to your IDE cable. Even with a high speed USB 2.0 hookup for the external, it will not match the speed of an internal.

Answer 2

Internal is NORMALLY faster.
External can be moved from computer to computer easier.

It is a matter of choice, really; and most computers come WITH at least 1 HD built in.

MANY years ago, some computers did NOT have a HD and booted over the LAN from a server. (Before "personal" computers became available) They were called "workstations", and HAD no built-in programming beyond a single ROM chip which sent them to the server for the needed "base" program, now called the OS.

AND even OLDER, NONE had built-in HD. There wasn't any such item! ALL storage was external.

Answer 3

It depends on your need's.

If you transfer files frequently from computer to computer and external is the only way to go. They are however slower then internal hard drives. The other plus of external is security you can physically take your hard drive and secure it with ease.

Answer 4

Editing video? two internal 250 Gb drives, and some external 500 Gb drives for final storage, backup, and transport are great for all my friends, National Geo documentary producers.

They'll edit 400 hours of video, just for one species' one hour documentary!

I run two external 80Gb Firewire 400's.

My internal drives are either SCSI, for it's 16 head write at 40 to 320Mbs, or IDE drives, all of 18 to 50 Gb in size. But, the SCSI drives' 16 parallel heads and 10,000 rpm spindle speeds mean very high speed computer saves... in http://pclinuxos.com that I run!

Answer 5

i think the external hard drive is better because you could get more space and it is portable. another reason why its so good is because you could have your privacy if you want to keep personal stuff on it. internal hard drives are not that good because you could only attach a certain amount of hard drives on the mother board, depending on the size.you could get how many external hard drives you want and use them at different times to store whatever you want.

Answer 6

Internal - unless you want to unplug it and take it with you.
you could of course be talking about a NAS drive, these are pretty spanky and thunder along at a right old pace.
So in brief.
USB 1- for sad lonely people with lots of time on their hands.
USB 2- not bad, good for timing an egg
Firewire - something that came and went like Betamax
NAS - Acronyms are always good - get a NAS Multimedia drive
Sata - Hoorah, I can load a game in less than an hour
Sata 2- Faster than road runner with his privates on fire
SCSI - One Protocol to rule them all - minter than mint
Fibrechannel -Its like SCSI on all bran - imagine half a terrabyte array 50km away and running like it was plugged in 2 feet away ! (until someone steps on the fibre optic cable)

Yes internal all the time for me - external drives are evil and should be made illegal under European law.

Answer 7

Depends on if you plan on taking it with you or if you plan on having it permanenrly inside the box/laptop. Internal is good if you are installing Windows on it. Other than that external is mainly for transporting to multiple comuters and easy access.

Answer 8

Depends how you want to use it. If you want it to be portable then external. If you are not going to be swapping it between Pc's then stick with an internal.

Answer 9

All my bays are taken up, so I'd use an external.

Answer 10

Internal will be fastest