Question:
Harddrive SATA/ATA
If I had to buy a 3.5" harddrive to make it as an external harddrive, does it make any different whether I buy the harddrive with SATA, or just ATA ?
Answer:
No, mainly because it'll be hooked up to the USB ports and any speed advantage from SATA will be lost through the USB connection. You may actually want to consider getting a 2.5" notebook drive and put it into an external USB 2.0/Firewire case. You get similar performance in a small package that doesn't require any power adapters to operate, just the USB cable.
-Vb-
Answer:
If you think you might ever want to transport your external harddrive into a desktop then you might as well stick with an SATA since notebook drives are typically more expensive but either way, as mentioned, the benefit is lost through USB.
I wonder if anyone has an iPod on these boards. I see so many topics about external hard drives. I happen to use an iPod as an external drive.