Hard Drives

[n0Mad]

What's the difference between an external hard drive, and a portable one? And between either of those and an internal HD with a docking station, which would you recommend? And why? What are the pros, cons, etc?

[Shaun]

Don't think there is a difference between external and portable but maybe I'm missing something. I'd just get an external unless you need multiple drives. Then it probably be cheaper just to do a docking station and swap them out. I have a docking station but only because I wanted to recycle the drive from my old desktop.

p.s. if you already have a spare hard drive you can buy an enclosure's and make your own external for cheaper then you can buy them. Only reason I didn't was because the docking station was cheaper at the time and I just wanted it for backup.

[StormKnight (1)]

External drives usually require a power source independent of a computer.

The portable external drives take power from the bus they are on (USB or IEEE 1394,) so no power brick.

Thing is, if it is a portable drive to a portable computer on battery, it will shorten the battery time.

Remember some motherboards are set up to spread the power over several ports on the bus, so a heavy draw from a portable drive will pull signal and power away from other devices.

[freydis]

Depends on what youre getting it for. If youre looking for simple storage for lots of files (and need your library to be portable), external is fine, but if youre looking to use whats on the drive often, and its some sort of executable, or a file that needs to "play" (like a movie), I'd go for internal. Reason being, your external drive will be limited to the rate of data flow dictated by its medium of hookup, for lack of a better word. USB, FireWire, etc. However, one of those Ethernet docking thingies wouldnt be bad, as information rate of flow on that would be rather good.

[n0Mad]

I'm going to be doing some more video editing. Nothing fancy, just putting some of my performance stuff on YouTube and what not. Video takes up a buttload of space so I'm looking for an external hard drive to put it all on. Plus, I need to free up more room on my internal HD so I can install Starcraft II on my laptop.