External Hard Drive

Oneday77

Firewire I = 400Mbps
Firewire II = 800Mbps
USB I = 115Mbps
USB II = 480Mbps

All of these transfer speeds are theoretical maximums. There is no real substitue for internal drives other than e-sata. You have to remember computers have a tendency to scale speeds down to the lowest common denominator. So if you have a USB II port and plug a USB I device into it, the likely hood is and paired up USB II sockets will slow down to that pace too. Some USB expansion cards and motherboards can compensate for this but most don't. Not sure on the Firewire though, odds are you wouldn't have more than one FW device anyway lol.
Fitting an extra internal drive is not that difficult mind you and will give you double the capacity for the same if not less cost.

closed

Usb 1 isn't that fast.

Eric_Pisch

many motherboards now have an esata connector

I use one of these, connected via the esata cable (takes usb as well)

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=382971

hot swappable for 2.5" and 3.5" drives with no need for caddys / cases (i have a stack of drives to plug in)

you just have to make sure you dont touch the bare circuit board on the drive when its on

Marty_J

OK_Sauce wrote: »

Wow, according to that chart there's not a lot between USB 2.0 and Firewire. I'm really surprised about that.

USB looks as though it should be faster on paper, but Firewire is quite a bit faster in the real world, as explained here.