Computer Question....

[89checkmate]

I need a new hard drive for my pentium 4.
should I go with internal or external drive?
Ide or usb connections?

[VillainDave]

Go internal IDE unless you have some reason you want to carry it around with you. and the internal drive will run faster!

[LHC30Victory]

get a serial drive - well, only if you have the motherboard that can handle it - otherwise just get an IDE internal with the biggest buffer available (for speed)

[mickeyfinn]

Unless you are doing a lot of downloading (music, videos or movies), buy the cheapest hard drive you can find. I don't know about where you are but you can regularly find them here at best buy for 20 or 30.00 after a mail in rebate. The rebates are a pain in the a$$ but if you follow the directions you will get a good deal. Even the smallest hard drive available will give you plenty of room for anything you might need unless you are doing something like mass downloading. The speed thing is ok but unless you have a new top of the line computer you probably won't even see a difference in speed unless you have a motherboard that supports the UDMA 133 or 100 and the drive is the only thing on that channel. If you put a slower device such as a CD-rom or CDRW on the same channel you will see no increase in speed. If you have a burner and you copy from one cd to another you will definitely want to put the cd reader on the same channel as your hard drive or you will be seeing buffer underrun errors when copying cd's.