I have thinking of purchasing something to back up large amounts of data
(primarily audio, sonar projects, and digital video) on and am looking
at purchasing either a 2nd internal hard drive or an external one. I
have some questions on the advantages and disadvantages of each.

External Firewire/USB2.0 HDs:
I don't have any experience with external hard drives and am wondering
how they handle in respect to internal hard drives. In reading some
things, I gathered that they are almost if not as fast as an internal HD
(or am I mistaken because I find that hard to believe)? Can I use an
external hard drive for recording live audio to (are they fast enough to
keep up with doing audio and video recording)? In terms of data
storage, would you say they are safer as a back up tool than having
another internal hard drive? I have heard that if the power supply on
the computer fails, you are more likely to lose data contained on a
internal HD than an external HD, is this true? So what are the
disadvantages of purchasing an external HD compared to an internal HD
other than the price?

A firewire drive sounds very tempting seeing as I could back up tons of
data on it, and have the drive around so I can easily back things up
whenever I want and move it around. I just want to make sure that I am
not missing some disadvantage like well they are only half as fast as an
internal drive, etc. They sound too good to be true.

Thanks,
Andrew V. Romero