Which external HD for my Dell laptop?

[edelran]

I have a new Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop with a 30GB HD. I would like to run an external HD for backup and image storage, perhaps up to 160GB in size. The Dell has a firewire port, and I can get a USB 2 PCMCIA card for it as well.

Question 1: Does anyone see an advantage in one interface vs. the other?

Question 2: I have a choice between getting a HD that is dedicated to the interface I choose, vs. getting an adapter kit that will hold a standard IDE HD and run it from that interface. Seems to me the latter choice has the advantage of being better able to change HDs in the future, as needed, but am I overlooking some disadvantage here?

Thanks for any advice on these questions!

edelran

[iisbob]

The new USB 2.0 standard promises over 500 Mbps ( about 50 MB's per sec transfer rate-better than your average IDE ATA66 interface ) that's right at and actually a little better than firewires' transfer rate.

I would go with the PCcard interface since it's universally accepted in just about all laptop's, and firewire seems to be falling by the way side. Not too mention that the adapter kit you consider purchasing will be obsolute when the new serial ATA interface comes out.



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iisbob

Computer-Show me the Enterprise; no bloody A, no bloody B, and no bloody C-just the original...Mr Scott { from a STNG episode }