Notebook HDD or External?

Hi

I know that this has been posted before, but still as the prices and tech changes, I am posting it again. I am planning to buy a new HDD. Around 100GBs or 80Gbs. My budget is around 5k.

I have a laptop, HP nx6110. The question that I have is, should I go for a USB drive or 2.5" drive for the notebook. The next question is, if I get the notebook HDD, can I connect my old HDD with this one, simultanioulsy when required? Is there any usb-ide convertor avalable for 2.5" HDDs?

I want the new HDD as a primary disk. The one that I have right now... I will use it as backup drive, so I want to be able to connect both of them at one time.

And now the third que, which brand should I go for and what might be the costs of the HDDs?

Thanks in advance.... please don't report the thread as I have explained the reason.

Aditya
__________
Does no one know?

get a new 80/100gb internal drive and replace ur existing wid it. but a 2.5" usb hdd casing for abt rs.250 and put ur old hdd in it. so u haf 100gb of internal driver + ur new portable usb hdd!

Firstly notebook 2.5" HDDs and 2.5" Portable HDDs are basically the same thing, portable HDDs have casing around them. If you were to upgrade you could choose a notebook hard drive to replace your existing one. The benefit here is warranty and price, it turns out to be much cheaper and has a longer warranty compared to normal portable hard drives (WD Passport, etc.) You could then encase the present one in a portable HDD case and use it as an external drive. I would suggest not to use both as primary drives as fitting them and removing them repeatedly could cause problems. You could use USB or Firewire to connect the external drive.

The cost of a 120 GB, 5400 RPM, 2MB Buffer, 2.5" HDD would be about Rs. 5000 - 5600 (WD, Toshiba or Hitachi). I use Western Digital WD 120 GB which cost me Rs. 5600 3 months ago and it came with 5 years warranty. An 80 GB would be about 4500 for the same specs. I think 160 GB notebook HDDs are available so you might like to check out. A case, if you want to convert to external would be another Rs. 300 - 1300 depending on the brand and quality.

Thanks Aberforth, I am going to buy it in around first week of Jan, after my exams. Any chance that prices will get down? And how about transcend of segate HDDs?

Aditya