1394 or USB for external? help novice

Hi, I'm running out of room with my tiny notebook HD (80gb). I'm thinking an external HD is the only option as they are in my price range.

Basically I'm looking to try AoC and it takes almost 30 GB alone!

That is insane and I want to be able to keep my other games installed as well. From what I have googled Esata is the best - I don't see any ports that look like I have that. There is some debate between usb 2.0 and fire-wire. As much as I understand it, 1394 is a means to connect via fire-wire - how do I know what my computer can handle?

The notebook is a dell inspiron E1700. I have dual core 1.83 3326 RAM. The graphics card is Nvidia Geforce Go 7900 GS 256mb. Basically it seems like the machine is the bare minimum for most recommended setups, with the processors lagging behind. I probably have another year of it being viable for gaming, but the HD issue needs to be resolved.

Are there any external HD that would let me play current games with minimal negative impact? Also, I was told Dell notebooks are really not upgradable in terms of processors and I assume video cards and internal HDs may apply as well.

Can I get some opinions on how to extend the life of this machine and what if any external HD will work with gaming?

Thanks much, I am trying to be less ignorant of these things!

I assume firewire is A LOT faster than USB.
That's why the external hard drives with firewire are almost twice the price for the same amount of memory.
For example: I can get a 500GB with USB for about €90, but the firewire HD is about €200.

So you can't get an internal drive? They are about the same price you know, just saw a 1TB drive from Samsung for only €130..

I run all of my games off of one of these:

Seagate 500GB USB HDD. I play everything from Sudoku to Crysis with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It's small, good looking and very well priced. I'd recommend the above very, very highly.

Source games do load exceptionally slowly, for some reason. I haven't been able to confirm if this is caused by the USB drive or not, but the games themselves run as though they were running off an internal. All other games load as fast as if it was an internal drive.

I also use a USB dvd drive as a backup. Don't notice a difference between that and my internal.

I also use USB keyboard and mouse and wifi dongle. Hell, my PC is basically a giant USB hub.

I run all of my games off of one of these:

Seagate 500GB USB HDD. I play everything from Sudoku to Crysis with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It's small, good looking and very well priced. I'd recommend the above very, very highly.

Source games do load exceptionally slowly, for some reason. I haven't been able to confirm if this is caused by the USB drive or not, but the games themselves run as though they were running off an internal. All other games load as fast as if it was an internal drive.

I also use a USB dvd drive as a backup. Don't notice a difference between that and my internal.

I also use USB keyboard and mouse and wifi dongle. Hell, my PC is basically a giant USB hub.

fatshodan

I lol'd

[QUOTE="fatshodan"]

I run all of my games off of one of these:

Seagate 500GB USB HDD. I play everything from Sudoku to Crysis with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It's small, good looking and very well priced. I'd recommend the above very, very highly.

Source games do load exceptionally slowly, for some reason. I haven't been able to confirm if this is caused by the USB drive or not, but the games themselves run as though they were running off an internal. All other games load as fast as if it was an internal drive.

I also use a USB dvd drive as a backup. Don't notice a difference between that and my internal.

I also use USB keyboard and mouse and wifi dongle. Hell, my PC is basically a giant USB hub.

vash47

I lol'd

What's funny?

Well, my local dealers are no help. I called to ask about products and they literally said I was wrong and Conan was 3.2gb - and in fact no game on the market exceeded 5gb - Sooo, they are idiots. They also said Firewire could only be used for file transferring IE a camera.

I need to bug smarter people once again. Any examples of like a 500GB external that supports a 1394 connection and any upgrades I might need to get the most out of it?

I run all of my games off of one of these:

Seagate 500GB USB HDD. I play everything from Sudoku to Crysis with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It's small, good looking and very well priced. I'd recommend the above very, very highly.

Source games do load exceptionally slowly, for some reason. I haven't been able to confirm if this is caused by the USB drive or not, but the games themselves run as though they were running off an internal. All other games load as fast as if it was an internal drive.

I also use a USB dvd drive as a backup. Don't notice a difference between that and my internal.

I also use USB keyboard and mouse and wifi dongle. Hell, my PC is basically a giant USB hub.

fatshodan

I have that, works great. Although I never thought about using it to store my games. I got it to store all my other files because my games are starting to take up a lot of space. I may try and install a game on it to see how it runs.

The only thing I dont like is that I cant take off the base, I wanted to just lay it down.