A quick look around any store shows that you can get a 300GB internal HD for the same price as a 160GB external hard drive (of course these are for name brand drives). I got to thinking that maybe I could just buy an internal hard drive and get a case (not sure what they're called) to put it in (isn't that what all the ebay sellers do?). Anyway, I was wondering how well that would work and or if I would be better off just buying the regular external hard drive since it would probably be more reliable. THanks for the help anybody.
yes this is very common, and a good route. I personally don't use external drives, but if I were going to use them I would buy a hard drive and put it in a case myself. It is a much cheaper route. It sickens me how much these manufacturers charge for external drives, when it hardly costs anything at all to produce them. A plastic case, small power supply, and small board with a IDE to USB/firewire interface...thats it. tigerdirect has one for $40 here http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=31389&CatId=1204
Thanks djscoop. Don't want to sound like a total noob but I realized that the price for this is $40 non shipped. The Seagate 200GB internal hard drive I had my eye on is $125 non shipped. Thats about $180 probably total. Wouldn't I just be better off buying the 200GB external seagate on amazon with free shipping for $218? Sure its $40 more but isn't that worth possible compatibility problems, etc? Just playing devils advocate hehe.
its up to you, if you can find a good deal on an external drive then go for it. as far as compatibility goes, you shouldn't have any issues either way because with win2k and winxp you don't need extra software or drivers to run firewire & usb 2.0 external drives, they all pretty much should be plug and play. also, $125 for a 200GB Seagate sounds pretty pricey. I've seen ones for $80 at some places. Before you buy go to pricewatch.com, its a search engine for online stores of computer parts.
