Fast External Harddisk recommendation needed

I need to get an external harddisk for connecting to my Dell laptop.
This is basically to expand the disk space of my laptop so I can
install more apps to run on it (one of it being Flight Simulator). I
would like to know what's the best one to get. The external HD can be
connected either via USB or Firewire, which should I be looking at if
I need to stream media?

Basically, I need some good suggestions of which one to get.

Thanks!

phuile wrote:

I need to get an external harddisk for connecting to my Dell laptop.

This is basically to expand the disk space of my laptop so I can
install more apps to run on it (one of it being Flight Simulator).
I would like to know what's the best one to get.

I'd avoid the Maxtors, they dont cool the drives
very well at all and die like flys because they dont.

The external HD can be connected either via USB or Firewire,
which should I be looking at if I need to stream media?

Both will do that fine as long as you have USB2.

Basically, I need some good suggestions of which one to get.

I personally prefer to buy a decent housing separately
and put a normal drive in that. That way you get the full
3-5 year warranty rather than the universal 1 year
warranty that the packaged external drives have.

That does require more of you than taking a packaged drive out of the box tho.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage phuile wrote:
I need to get an external harddisk for connecting to my Dell laptop.
This is basically to expand the disk space of my laptop so I can
install more apps to run on it (one of it being Flight Simulator). I
would like to know what's the best one to get. The external HD can be
connected either via USB or Firewire, which should I be looking at if
I need to stream media?

Basically, I need some good suggestions of which one to get.

Thanks!

If fast is needed, your best bet is eSATA. There may be suitable
controller cards, depending on the type of card slot your
laptop has.

Arno