I've got a Dell Inspiron 5150 Right now with a 40GB HD and that’s not quite enough. I'd like to externalize a HD because it’s cheaper than buying an external HD. I have a couple of questions about it first, even though the process seems fairly idiot proof. First, should i/can I go with Serial ATA or regular IDE? I'm pretty sure I need to go with IDE because of possible motherboard compatibility issues with SATA. Second, anyone prefer any particular brand of HD over another? I've checked around on newegg and they seem to have some good deals on Seagate, but I really don't know. Any advice is appreciated about this. Also, if anyone has two cents about the issue as a whole that they would like to share, please let me know.

I doubt your Dell has SATA capability on the motherboard, so a regular IDE drive would be the way to go. Why not just get one large hard drive and install it in the place of your 40 gig?

As far as brands go, i don't have any favorites, but i recently bought a Samsung HD from newegg because it was cheap and huge, and love it.

If its a SATA->USB/FireWire adapter thing to make the drive external, it shouldn't matter what his motherboard supports, as long as it has a USB or FireWire port.

Ok thanks for the information.