External HD vs 2nd internal HD

[bob5820]

What benefits data security wise do an external HD offer over a second internal HD and some good back up software. I realize that an external is more portable, meaning I could use it to back up more then one system, but would it offer any real advantages over a second drive on single system. As far as the second drive goes I'm looking more twords using some kind of incremental back software like retrospect rather then RAID 1. I'm leaning away from the Raid 1 method for two reasons. 1) its my understanding that a raid array can have an adverse effect on OC'ing. 2) I want more flexability. My OS and Apps will go on a 74GB Raptor, and data on a portion of a 160 GB drive. I'd like to use the rest of that drive for playing around with Linux. A portion of the second drive, also 160GB, would be a back up to the data on the first 160GB drive, with the rest being used for a disc image of the Raptor. I've already got the two 160 GB drives, and buying Retrospect would be cheaper then going out and buying a Maxtor Onetouch. The Onetouch seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure that it offers any beneffits over a second internal drive. Any one care to comment? Also it seems kind of funny, that Maxtor only offers a 1yr warranty one the external drive, but 3 years on the internal. Well I gues that makes sence as the external is more suseptable to damage.

[99'erForever]

Security wise you are able to take the drive with you. What connection do the external hard drives you are looking at have? If you really need it to be portable go with the external otherwise internals are MUCH cheaper.

[JTanczos]

One advantage is safety. What I mean by this is that if you ever have a internal power spike it wont kill the external drive. That is unless the spike goes through the firewire or USB port. My old P133 had a power spike that fried my main HD, sent a shock through the ribbon cable frying the bios chip. Probably went through the SB and killed the controllers on the other 2 drives because those 2 still powered up and showed up in the bios but didnt respond to commands anymore. I had an old 350mb tape drive with only 5 tapes and about 9 gigs on 3 drives. Needless to say I lost 90% of my stuff. :cry: Worst day of my computer life.

Ide defenitly say if you are using it for backup that you should keep it external of the computer you are backing up for for safety reasons. Actually you should keep it offsite but who is going to do that besides corps.?

Secutity wise you could take it with you. Save all your "secret files" on that drive and dont leave anything on the computer. You might need to change your cacheing drive for programs like MS office so it doesnt save temp copies on the main drive but I think it can be done.

JT