External Hard Drives

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Just have a few quick questions about em.
First off, can you just use them for data? Or can you actually store and run programs from an external hard drive? For example, can I use an external hard drive for just games and keep other software on my main hard drive?
Are they better than internal hard drives?
What would be a good brand, model, size etc to look for?

 

Never used one - but probably it works just like an ordinary CD-drive. That is, you need the external drive inserted when you want to play the games installed on it.

That's all I can say.

 

They work exactly like a normal hd drive for ALL purposes. This means that you could have your swap file on one if you were so inclined. I would also like to point out that there is no reason as to why you could'nt run games of them, have some common sense man.

That being said they are MUCH slower than your average hd,because they won't be using the standard cabling inside your computer but rather a usb / firewire port and will therefore be limited by the speed of that port. Also thy are much more expensive than a normal hd and tend to cost at least twice that much per megabyte.

They're really only meant to carry around large amounts of information, there are some of them that go up to 500gb sizes but you REALLY need to fork out for those.

 

Harddisks, Note: Dutch prices


Edit:

Note, when a person, who claims he knows something about computers and bashes somebody who doesn't have any experience with computers or asks noob questions.
That is because that person knows almost as much as the person asking.

Oy, seems I was low on cofee...

[ October 05, 2003, 18:39: Message edited by: Morgoth ]

 

If you what a HD just for games then I would recommend buying another internal one, it is cheaper and faster. And external ones really aren't that good for gaming, I know I used one to play BG2 on my dad's laptop, and the load times were longer d it drove me crazy.

But if you have the money, and don't mind waiting a little longer than go for it, just don't drop them, just trust me on this one.

 

A lot depends on the connection you're using.

If you buy an external SCSI drive, there's no reason why you can't *boot* from it. If it's a USB 1.1 drive, then the measily 1meg/sec isn't going to be useful for anything other than data. If it's a USB 2.0 or IEE-1394 drive, then that 8 or 3.9meg/sec might do you a little better.

I guess if you kept the rack close enough, you can "external" an IDE drive with a 24" connector. You'll lose a lot in the transfer, though; if the max is 50meg/sec, it'll pull down to 30meg/sec.

Cash is what it boils down to. An external SCSI will cost the most, with the 24" IDE and rack-mount costing the least.

 

I'd agree with most of the people here.

You can use it for gaming or whatnot. It isn't a good idea for anything other than simple data transfer, though. They're more expensive than an internal one. Even an External SCSI drive won't be able to speed-match an internal one.

I prefer IBM and Seagate drives myself, but any is probably good. Model-no clue, mine are all internal. Size? Whatever you think you need/afford.

If you have the space, a 10k rpm HD will be the absolute best choice for gaming, but it'll also be the most expensive. A 7200 rpm isn't quite as good, but it's still better than any external drive.