Internal or External Hardware?

[Collective Foal]

I myself, have always preferred everything to be nice and neat in the PC case with no massive amounts of wires running everywhere. But I do understand the point that if you are, for example, a teacher, you want an external hard drive so you can carry your files to and from work. Both cover different ideas of conveniance. But also, having Internal equipment helps performance. Everything in that case is in sync, whereas your external drive has its own system and has to communicate throughthe cord with the rest of the PC. It's like Congress trying to discuss things over the phone. Its easier to just have everything in the same place, I guess. But please, tell me your opinions on this.

[ProHypster]

Internal and External hardware do not compete with each other and you can't really compare them....

 

It all depends on what you need to store on what and how much money you are willing to spend.

 

It's like comparing Flash light and House Light, they both have their uses and are not in competition with each other. One is mobile but less powerfull and rather unsafe the other is More static but safer and more powerfull.

 

Also on Laptops obviously External Hardware would be the only choice while on Static Computers it's really pointless to use external harddrive card and so on.. And USB's are in their own category overall.

 

Your question is very objective.

[Obsidian]

For me, it really depends on what the hardware is and if there are equivalent devices for both internal and external use. I'll usually choose internal hardware because of faster data speeds, but there are some things where I realize an external connection won't bottleneck the performance to the point I'd notice it in real-world use (such as a card reader, most of which connect to your computer via a USB 2.0 header anyway).

 

Plus, with eSata readily available on most motherboards, you don't really need to install your hard drive/s in your case if you don't want to or can't (small form factor cases don't always allow for multiple 3.5" drives to be natively installed). Sound cards/amps are another device which can usually perform just as well as an internal device, assuming the internal hardware of the external device is on par with the internal card. Also, with Thunderbolt now shipping on non-apple hardware, external devices will be able to compete more closely with their internal counterparts (where applicable).

 

The tl;dr version, I prefer internal but won't discount external solutions where viable.

[Collective Foal]

One thing I cant understand is why a 1 TB external hard drive costs $60 but to get one in your PC, it's about $140...

 

Care to explain?

[Obsidian]

$140? You need to shop around a bit more, you can get an internal seagate 1tb drive for about $80, give or take, and an internal WD Black for about $110 (western digital is still milking the floods from Thailand to earn higher profits, go figure). However, that still leaves internal drives to be more expensive than their external counterparts. This wasn't the case until recently and I still can't wrap my mine around that. The only thing I can think of to explain that is the external drives were produced before the Thailand floods, so the HDDs in those units were cheaper to make at the time and supply/demand inflation never caught up.

[BTGBullseye]

The external drives just perform like a 5400 RPM laptop drive, and the internals perform close to SSD speeds... The real difference in pricing is that people don't realize that it's cheaper, easier, and you get a better bang for your buck when you get an external enclosure and a normal internal drive. Most don't even realize that assembling your own external drive is possible. (I did quite a lot of research into this when I was looking for an external HDD)

 

Overall I came up with a 2TB Seagate 3.5" drive that performs at 130MB/s or faster read+write, (mid-grade SSD speeds) an external enclosure that has both USB 3 and eSATA II ports, and all for the same price as a 1TB external drive that couldn't even max out the USB 2 connection it was limited to. (I am very good at looking for deals, and I'm not afraid of putting in, literally, 4 screws to assemble it)

 

Still, I must mention that most of the older tech is the same price as the new stuff, and the rest is more expensive... If you were looking at some of the older drives you'll be seeing that $100+ price tag on drives that have less space, and perform worse than some new drive that only costs $85.

[Obsidian]

No surprise there, BTG. Older tech isn't widely produced (if produced at all) once the newer stuff takes hold, so old standards like DDR, DDR2, and IDE will be more expensive than DDR3 and SATA devices. Oddly enough, you can buy IDE SSDs.

[Alyxx Thorne]

Eh, for me it depends on what I need. For instance, it is impossible to get floppy controllers for modern motherboards so you're more or less forced to get an external USB floppy drive if you want a retro compatible computer these days.

 

But for most components like hard drive and such I prefer internal. I dunno, just feels like the less shit I have outside my computer the better.

[Obsidian]

Eh, for me it depends on what I need. For instance, it is impossible to get floppy controllers for modern motherboards so you're more or less forced to get an external USB floppy drive if you want a retro compatible computer these days.

 

But for most components like hard drive and such I prefer internal. I dunno, just feels like the less shit I have outside my computer the better.

 

And yet my PSU has a floppy header on one of its cables, the fuckery is that about? (I know, legacy support, blah blah...) ASRock had a motherboard (not sure if it's been revised for this year) last year with a ton of modern and legacy ports on it (including IDE and a few others I can't recall). I'm surprised there's not a company that makes a internal 5.25" bay device that's a combination either slim ODD and a floppy drive or a floppy Drive + a ton of card ports/USB ports, but I guess the demand for floppy drives is to low to warrant that sort of thing.

 

Fewer power bricks are always a plus, since most external devices that need the extra power have a power brick with them.

[Alyxx Thorne]

Yeah, the less cables the better in my opinion.

 

Speaking of, the failed PCJr computer from the early 80's used external RAM expansions. That's just so weird to me.

[Obsidian]

That's pretty weird. With the Thunderbolt connectors, it seems likely that we'll be seeing more components normally found in desktops in external enclosures. I wouldn't be surprised if, in about 5 years or less, that there will be computers that use these connectors to offer a modular system.

[Alyxx Thorne]

I don't know, really. The pros about having an external hard drive is the mobility so for transferring huge files or keeping backups, it's okay, I suppose.

[Ross Scott]

I've joked in the past that in the future you might have a nice small compact unit that's your PC, then an external block you lug around that's your videocard. Since they're inherently parallel in nature, your biggest limitation is size and heat. I mostly have everything inside the case, although for long term storage (that's where all the old CP and FM files are) I have redundant hard drives that I can plug into a SATA dock when I need to access something, then leave it turned off the rest of the time.

[BTGBullseye]

Externals are great for backups and regular storage, but usually you don't want to use them for much else.

[Collective Foal]

What would be nifty (I don't know if these exist already, so let me know if I'm a massive idiot.) is if there were extensions to SATA ports that sat on the outside of the case. I'm under the impression that SATA is much more quick and efficient at processing than USB, so having SATA adapters on our flash drives would probably be better than USB drives, saving ports for other peripherals we'd like to use.

[Humin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates#Storage