Hard Drive Upgrade or External Drive?

[rdy0329]

Hello, I have been contemplating for awhile now if I would pursue a 500GB hard drive upgrade or just buy one of those external drives that is about the same capacity?

Pros of Internal Upgrade:
More room
more bootcamp partition
no moving of files

Pros of External:
Time Machine
Portable
Backup files in case of internal drive failures.

What did you guys take or would suggest?

[kaizersix]

internal upgrade for me.. this way you can just buy an enclosure for the old hdd and you now have an external one.. not ideal for backup though since it has lower capacity..

[enshong]

For me.. I would buy an external drive since I can get a higher capacity for the same money.. I'll just load what I need on my laptop whenever I need to work at some other place.. I can also bring the external drive if I want to..

BTW, I'm talking about a 3.5 external drive.

[pilgrim28]

Upgrading to a 500GB internal HD is like having all your eggs in one basket... Now a good backup strategy will always point you to have an external drive. I myself was in that situation, but experience will always win over convenience so I chose a 1TB external drive which costs less than a 500GB external drive. Now i have the flexibility of having timemachine partition and two data drives, one for the Mac and the other for Windows.

[ricpac]

...I chose a 1TB external drive which costs less than a 500GB external drive.

Where and how much?

[pilgrim28]

Acenet GH, got it for P5,880. it's a Seagate FreeAgent Desk.

[DigitalAnalog]

An external desktop drive (e.g. Seagate FreeAgent Desk, WD My Book) is faster than most internal drives and will almost always be cheaper per unit of storage. The only problem is that it can't run straight from FireWire or USB. If you need it for field work, you may want to upgrade your internal drive and buy an external enclosure for your current drive; or just buy an external portable drive (e.g. Seagate FreeAgent or WD My Passport.)

[ice_man]

If there's no budget constraints, I suggest you get both.

I currently have a 320gb passport essential, external drive solely dedicated for my MB. It holds my music and my movies so that my MB is multimedia free.

Recently I ordered a 500gb internal drive to replace my 250gb original internal drive. Since I made this decision, what I'll do now, is sell my 320gb external and transfer all my multimedia on the new 500gb internal.

I really don't need the external anymore since, I have an iMac who holds everything I have on the MB, and connected to a 1TB Timecapsule for back up. Which is also connected to a 320gb Lacie for TimeMachine.

What, Im trying to say is, it's important to always have a back-up. So if you decide to get the 500gb internal, I suggest you also get a back up drive for that.

The 500gb internal is very convenient for me than carrying another external drive all the time.

[mackymd]

I agree with iceman. Upgraded my MBP to 500 gig via charlie and still maintain external backups for my files. As for me I have several Externals 80-120 gig (old HD which I have) and what's stored are classiffied per ext. HD such as pictures, movies lectures etc.

[zoldhic]

Go for 500GB external. portability issue.