A fast USB 2.0 or Firewire HDD

[reds4ever]

I need a fast, external hard drive for my laptop, around 40 gig (but bigger will have to do if they don't make them that small anymore) to collect streamed video at 1280x960 so it needs to be fast. I use a lossless compression codec at the moment but I'm still dropping frames due to the laptops slow hard drive.

If I got a firewire model I'd be running it through the card slot, if that makes any difference.

[Asher]

Just get an enclosure and put your own drive in it.

[reds4ever]

Do you know of a fast, small IDE drive then? I've got an enclosure knocking about the house somewhere.

[Asher]

Any time it's an external drive, the bottleneck will be the interface and not the drive itself. Any 7200rpm drive would do.

[reds4ever]

Cheers Asher. Many thanks!!

[Q Classic]

Make sure you match sizes properly. Just so you know, 2.5" drives (laptop size, which make for smaller enclosures) are a bit more expensive at 7200rpm; most are still around 5400. (One may argue that their smaller size may go some ways to making up for it... though to be honest, at that resolution it seems as if USB2/Firewire will be the bottleneck anyway.)

[snoopy369]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136020

WD does a pretty good job with externals, and there's no longer really any reason *not* to get an external as opposed to internal+enclosure (it's not that much cheaper anymore) if you don't care about size. $65 for 80gb is not bad, not good per GB but cheap overall

Now, if you prefer a larger HDD,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144140 is a 160gb internal HDD for about the same after purchasing the enclosure. $51 plus $10-$25 for the external enclosure.

But again if 80GB is all you'll ever need, you might as well get the first, it'll be quite a bit lighter probably.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136021 is the 160gb external version, for $15 more ($81). You pay about $15 or so for the interface (software) and probably a fairly high quality enclosure (probably in the $25 range if you bought it separately).

[LordShiva]

How recent is your laptop? Does it have an eSATA port?