so i was planning on getting a small sata internal hard drive and a large external usb2 hard drive, but i was concerned about the speed of usb2. but i just heard that there are such things as external sata ports! so if i build a comp with these, i can use a sata hard drive that was built to be on the inside of a computer, on the outside, right? hard drives dont have to be cooled right?

You can either get an external case that accepts a standard 3.5" IDE or SATA HDD or you can get a unit with a HDD preinstalled. The most common connection between the PC & external is USB 2.0. I think what you're asking about is eSATA.

If your motherboard supports it, there may be ports on the rear of the board or there'll be a cable/bracket that gets connected to the board & screwed into one of the slots in the rear of the case. If your board doesn't support it, you'll need to buy a PCI or PCI-e adapter card.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-esa...

http://www.extremetech.com/article2...

As to the "other" question hard drives dont have to be cooled right?...

Right. Aluminum external HD cases are always best. Aluminum dissipate heat better than plastic or any other material.

i_Xp/VistaUser

Please explain WHY you are thinking along the lines you are. What advantage is there to a large External for you?

reason: ritual formatting

i figure i can just niggerrig a chord from the psu to come out of the case so i dont have to pay for another psu. theres no reason i cant do that right?

First of all I am Caucasian but I think others here may take offense to your teerminology. That said, eSATA drives are 3.5" SATA harddrives in an enclosure that is AC powered and connects to either eSATA integrated ports on your MBoard or to ports on an add-in card for that prupose. The advantage is faster transfers.

There is no advantage to using an external harddrive over an internal one. On the contrary, internal drives should be faster and cheaper. External drives were designed as an easy way to expand storage for folks that don't wish to open their case or don't have an open drive bay. Laptops can also benefit. They should not be used as the only source of data storage but rather as a backup. They are also useful for their portability. eSATA enclosures with huge amounts of storage ard being use for storage of video files (DVR).

In your case why not simply build the computer with suffiecent internal storage to start with?

so i can disconect it when i do risky virusy stuff

i know internal drives are cheaper, thats why im asking if i can use one AS an external one.

Not without an external eSATA enclosure.

Did you ever hear of drive bays? You can slide a drive into a front loading bay. Multiple drives can be rotated into that type of enclosure.

You really think removing a drive is going to protect you? What happens when you have an infection you don't know about yet and you reconnect the drive?

well ive got to do something. ive been backing up dozens and now hundreds of gigs on dvds! time consuming! i hate virus scanners because of all the false positives, plus spybot tried to get rid of all my p2p sharing programs one fateful update. dont trust em. i dont like mcaffe or norton either cause of the giant popups they produce that i have to close, on top of that, virus protection just doesnt allow me to run certain programs and do certain things on my computer that are completely safe! ive been thinking about a bluray burner but i just dont have the money right now.

Had you stated your need from the start the answers may have been different. First off you can set any scans to skip the partition with the DVD backups. That is assumming you have multiple partitions, which I recommend. If the primary mission of the external drive is for DVD backups then that is a practical use. Other options for dealing with DVD images may be considered illegal and therefore it is not permissible to help with that.

If you engage in risky internet practices you may want to consider using a separate computer that is not networked to your other computers. Sooner or later you will get burned. If not by some type of malware/ virus/ trojan, etc. Then by RIAA, MPAA, etc.