SATA Internal vs SATA External

I recently had a power outage at my house and I guess my surge
protector was bad because my external USB 2.0 IDE drive is TOAST and
will no longer show up in my computer (I took it out of the enclosure
and installed it internally and it wouldn't show up either). SO, today
I went to Fry's to get a new external drive, but decided to just get
an internal SATAII drive because it was cheaper. I got a 320GB Maxtor
SATAII for $59.99. So my MOBO supports SATA (I'm assuming SATAII
also?) and I figured if I end up wanting to make it an external drive
down the road, I will just buy an enclosure on Ebay.

So my question is: Is there a speed difference when using an internal
hard drive vs. an external hard drive? Common sense would tell me even
though it is a SATAII drive, if I make it external and I connect it
via USB 2.0 (or firewire for that matter), that now it really doesn't
MATTER that it's SATAII, because now I'm only transferring files at a
USB 2.0 speed, correct? So am I correct in saying that if I want fast
transfer speeds, I am better off leaving it internal inside the
computer via SATA then making it external for convenience purposes
correct? And if I DO want to end up getting an external drive for
convenience purposes that I can theoretically just get a cheap old IDE
drive because its transferring at USB 2.0 speeds so it really doesn't
matter if its SATA or not right?

THANKS

E

On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:39:58 -0700, Erich93063
<erich93063.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:

>I recently had a power outage at my house and I guess my surge
>protector was bad because my external USB 2.0 IDE drive is TOAST and
>will no longer show up in my computer (I took it out of the enclosure
>and installed it internally and it wouldn't show up either). SO, today
>I went to Fry's to get a new external drive, but decided to just get
>an internal SATAII drive because it was cheaper. I got a 320GB Maxtor
>SATAII for $59.99. So my MOBO supports SATA (I'm assuming SATAII
>also?)

No there is no reason to assume SATA 300 also. IF your
board is new enough that it does support SATA 300, then you
have that support... but if it doesn't support SATA 300, you
might just need to change a jumper on the drive to run it in
SATA 150 mode.

Above I used "150" and 300" since SATA I and II are not
proper terms.




>and I figured if I end up wanting to make it an external drive
>down the road, I will just buy an enclosure on Ebay.
>
>So my question is: Is there a speed difference when using an internal
>hard drive vs. an external hard drive?

No

>Common sense would tell me even
>though it is a SATAII drive, if I make it external and I connect it
>via USB 2.0 (or firewire for that matter), that now it really doesn't
>MATTER that it's SATAII, because now I'm only transferring files at a
>USB 2.0 speed, correct?

Right, USB2 is substantially slower than SATA150 or 300.
You'd be as well off buying a controller card that supports
eSATA and connecting the drive to it, putting it in that
enclosure you already had to contain it (so long as you
don't need to use it as USB elsewhere).


>So am I correct in saying that if I want fast
>transfer speeds, I am better off leaving it internal inside the
>computer via SATA then making it external for convenience purposes
>correct? And if I DO want to end up getting an external drive for
>convenience purposes that I can theoretically just get a cheap old IDE
>drive because its transferring at USB 2.0 speeds so it really doesn't
>matter if its SATA or not right?

Not exactly, you can say an IDE drive is just as fast in
your system because SATA is not a performance level in
itself, it is an upper limit that a single drive (that you
have) cannot reach yet. It is no more or less valid to
choose PATA (which you called IDE) over SATA, or vice-versa,
for any kind of performance factor reasoning at all, inside
or outside of an enclosure, rather than considering the
performance of the exact drive via it's physical parameters
besides which interface (PATA or SATA) it uses.

Beyond that, yes you could use PATA, but it has nothing to
do with performance differences between the two. Rather it
would depend on what your external enclosure supported.
Today there are fairly good deals on enclosures with drives
in them so you might just keep an eye out for deals on thos,
especially since some of the aftermarket enclosures are
pretty poor quality (including the PSU in them or their
external brick) which could be why your prior enclosure and
drive failed).