IDE or external USB HDD?

[studiomaster]

My recording/audio harddrive is not fully getting along with my system whenever i put it as slave. But i have an enclosure(USB) for it. my question is that, will i notice any differences in speed if i put it externally and run via USB rather than IDE?

 

[dgatwood]

My recording/audio harddrive is not fully getting along with my system whenever i put it as slave. But i have an enclosure(USB) for it. my question is that, will i notice any differences in speed if i put it externally and run via USB rather than IDE?

Yes. You'll notice a large difference. USB mass storage is among the highest performance hits you can do to a computer short of running SETI@Home.

Seriously. Either use a FireWire enclosure or ATA, and preferably the latter. USB-attached storage requires massive CPU cycles in order to maintain the transfer rate. The difference between ATA and USB is probably the difference between 2% of your CPU and 30% of your CPU being dedicated to servicing transfers to/from the drive.

You shouldn't, however, be using multiple hard drives on a single ATA bus if you can help it. An ATA controller starts at about $20. Buy one. Alternately, put the second drive on the same bus as your optical drive, as you are unlikely to be using both at the same time in any significant way.