2.5" external HDD questions

[Scarlet Fever]

When I got my MacBook, I stupidly thought 60GB would be heaps for my uses. Now i spend a day of every week cleaning old stuff off to accomodate new data, and I have some data spread on to the 80GB HDD which came out of my iMac (I have a case for it).
Some of the data on the external drive would be great to have with me all the time, but it's a pain bringing the cables with me (power and a long USB cable).
So, I was going to get an external 2.5" HDD, as they are bus powered, and a lot more portable than the 3.5" HDDs.

1. If i buy a HDD from Lacie or another brand, could/should i take the HDD out, put it in my MacBook, and put the MacBook HDD in the case?

2. What I/O port (USB/FW) is better (faster, more reliable, etc.)? Is USB bootable?

 

[iW00t]

I was looking around for the very same thing.

Found this:
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/toughtech_mini.php

Wonder if they will ship to Oz, it is cheaper than the crappy looking on sold by Streetwise.

 

[EasyB]

I will be doing my second HD upgrade to my macbook since it was new. First from 80 to 120, and now from 120 to 160gb. Basically what I am doing is buying a 160GB from macsales.com for $160, throwing it in my macbook, put the old drive in a usb SATA enclosure that I found for $50, transfer user files from external to macbook and I am up and running with a nice little external to boot.

Firewire is better, faster than usb. But I have both for my 4 extra 2.5 drives laying around. The usb works allot better in the new intel models than they did on my G4 powerbook. If you are just going to use it for backups and extra storage, for the price, you can't beat the usb ones. If you can find both usb and FW great. But finding a reasonable priced SATA 2.5 enclosure is the main problem. And if you wanted a fast little drive for video editing or something, you would be better off buying a new 7200rpm drive than using the one that comes out of your macbook.

ezb