Hello everyone I hope you dont mind putting up with my...well newbie questions. I love computers, but know very little about them. I am havign a blast with video editing, but have found that the 80gig on my comp ran out very quickly. My original plan was to add an external drive (since it seems easy enough and i dont think i know enough to add and internal). My questions is: Are the external drives worth it? Are they a great deal slower than an internal? (Keep in mind my main intetions if for video editing). Or am i better off doing an internal drive, in which case i would need a little instruction and tips on which on to get . Thanks for reading

-Daem

Hi there Daemian!

We welcome ALL types of questions here, regardless of level of PC knowledge! :-)

External hard drives are a great addition to your setup, especially if you want to move your data (or yourself) to different PCs. As with anything related to I.T. you can expect a huge range of choice with many different varieties.

Things to consider...

i) The capacity (size) of the hard drive that you need
ii) The interface (USB, Firewire)
iii) The price

Firewire is faster at data transfer than USB but you have to rmember that it is a relatively new interface and many PCs just don't have the connector. USB on the other hand, whilst slower, is much more universal. This only matters to you if you are physically moving the drive from PC to PC.

Data transfer speeds are on the whole slower than normal internal hard drives but the versatility that you gain can outweigh this. Sizes have recently increased massively so you will be spoilt for choice there.

Thanks for your help. I have spent some time thumbign through tigerdirect's offers and think i will go with about a 160gig usb/firewire external hard drive. I appreciate the help, and will be even more thankful when i can store hours of raw footage thanx again

-Daem