External hard drives vs. internal w/enclosure

Factual Questions
1

I searched Tom’s Hardware but couldn’t find anything that pointed me in the right direction. Background:

My computer has 2 USB ports and a 4-pin Firewire port.

What I’m looking to buy is an internal hard drive, put it in an enclosure, and hook it up via either USB or my ghetto 4-pin Firewire port. The problem with this relatively simple design is that I don’t understand the difference in all of the crazy ATA, SATA, IDE, etc. stuff. I therefore come to you, the Dopers. What I’d like is a 200 GB+ storage solution on the cheap. Expandability would be nice, like maybe do they make enclosures that I can later stick a 2nd drive in? I’m clueless when it comes to this. I found this at OfficeMax, and it seems to be a decent deal for that much storage, although I’m sure I could eBay it for cheaper. Speed isn’t a huge issue here, but price is. :slight_smile: Like this auction has less than a day left, but it’s cheap, after all. I just wouldn’t know what to do with it.

So, finally, I need what I said that I need. With education about it, I could probably do it myself, but I don’t know if it’d be easier to just point out an enclosure and HD, or to teach me what I need to look for. :confused:

2

Do you know if your USB is 1.1 or 2.0?

3

P.S., that auction is cheap right now, but I guarantee you that won’t be the selling price.

4

Looks like 2.0, at least from what I could figure out from the device manager.

5

Out of curiosity, is there a reason you want to use an internal drive externally as opposed to buying an external drive?

6

You can “roll your own” cheaper usually. That said, this looks like the best solution right now, if you have USB 2.0. Everest or Belarc should tell you for sure.

7

audiobottle: price, mainly. And also, I’m using a laptop right now, and it might be more convenient to stick the internal into my computer at a later point if I buy a desktop in like 2023. :confused:

8

yoyodyne: Holy poop that is cheap! Thanks.