portable or external hard drive questions

[hatchet]

Thinking of buying one for extra storage.  Do files stored on external drive bypass the domputers hard drive or do they first download back onto the computers hard drive before opening?  Or to ask it another way, can you open a file directly from the external drive?  Any suggestions on where I should look for a primer on portable hard drives?  I assume protable and external means the same thing.  Thanks from someone who knows just a little bit more than a newbie, but not much.

[GX1_Man]

You can access them directly. The internal hard drive just holds Windows and programs.etc. There is no pass through of data from one to the other.

I would NOT recommend running programs from an external, and as a matter of fact I would not recommend an external, but that's another issue. Keep in mind that all hard drives die eventualy, including an external , so backup important files regularly to optical media.  

Here is some general info, and you can Google for a LOT more:

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,104829,00.asp

[hatchet]

Thanks so much.  And for the PCWorld link.