External hard drives?

[stigmata]

Hi,

So my laptop hard drive is getting full, what with all this mined databases and everything, so I was thinking about getting an external hard drive. Will USB suffice and is it fast enough? Or is there a better solution such as getting a firewire PCMCIA card and running it through that?

I will probably want to storing a lot of data on the external drive. How about running games from it etc?

Any particularly good makes? The price seems pretty reasonable for big drives now, so cost isn't too much of a problem (within reason /images/graemlins/wink.gif)

Thanks

[BluffTHIS!]

I have a Maxtor 80 gig external drive that I'm very happy with. It includes one-touch software for easy bakcups too. It is connected via USB. They are very reasonably priced and available at most office supply/computer stores, though you probably will get the best deal online from somewhere like newegg.com.

[jdaddy]

Using Maxtor One Touch Back Up 250 GB. Has USB 2.0 option or Firewire option. I have used both connections (not at same time of course) for intensive video editing without a problem. For mere storage and no back up I would skip the Maxtor One Touch however as it is difficult to use as a extra drive only (tries to load the back up software which eats up a small amount of storage).
Single table you should be ok with USB 1.0 external hard drive. Multi-table Party with pokertracker, HUD, etc maybe too much, in which case go with USB 2.0 or Firewire.

[stigmata]

OK thanks for the replies, I guess I get one with firewire and USB2 ports. If the USB2 isn't quite fast enough then I can get a Firewire PCMCIA card for a touch more speed.

I will probably be mainly storing the PT databases on the external hard drive and running the poker software from the main drive, so I guess this should be OK.