AThere really is no such thing as a separate "internal" drive.

When you buy a case that already has the drive installed in it, it would be the same as what you are calling "internal".

BUT - the smaller cases accept only the 2.5" format laptop hard drives.

Larger cases accept the 3.5" desktop form factor drives.

Both have become reliable, but hard drives themselves, internal or external, are not known as fully reliable in the first place. They crash, whether internal or external. I'd think that the external USB or Firewire drive units do experience more things that can go into a drive malfunctioning, though, simply due to their portable nature. For example, if the little case gets knocked to the floor from table height, it *may* cause a problem. Or perhaps they are not using the "Remove Hardware Safely" routine, which is like not putting a lightning rod on your tall building and reaching the misguided conclusion that the lightning rod is not really needed. And people being people, you are not very likely to see them report something that may be their own fault. No, in this day and age, everything is someone else's fault. *grin*

Buy good brand name quality, whether the disk comes installed in the case or whether you want to buy an empty case and install disk yourself.

And take care of it, which should include the routine backing up of data IMO.

Hard drives can and do crash, whether external or internal. --And people who don't do the backups lose data all the time.

Carbonite. carbonite.com Good way to spend about 50 bucks a year and have automatic backups of your data.



--Mac

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