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Disk space is getting cheap. You can buy hard drives for next to nothing. Do you have the room? Are the hard disks fast? Do you keep the computer going with a lot of tasks at once? Fast computers nowadays don't really present a problem answering these questions. The only reasons I would think off the top of my head to have external storage would be:
* You could seriously cram a BUNCH of dedicated hard disks in one system, saving only the OS files for your system.
* You could share it out with your entire household, keeping the resources you use on your personal computer to yourself.
* If you have a disaster in one area of the house, you could in theory protect valuable information (Don't rely on this method as an actual backup, I'm just thinking out loud here!)
* Searching times depend on many factors, a couple of which are: CPU type speed, bus speed, hard drive speed, hard disk type (although SATA is a fast alternative, SCSI as well), cache, RAM, tasks running on the server.
It certainly helps the searching if everything is local on your hard disk and you have nothing running at the time.
Having said all of this, I'm currently running a server computer with Samba; no problems here.
If you think you're just cluttering up an area of your hard drive you don't need more storage, you need organization, and you need to stick to that setup.
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"You looked at me as if I was eating runny eggs in slow motion." - Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip
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