I think it's probably six of one, half a dozen of the other. I don't think it'd matter. However, to see that your external drive isn't the cause of the problem, try unplugging it when Finder freezes up. A bugger external (or network) drive can crash Finder quite easily. Of course, give Finder some time before unplugging the external because sometimes the frozen appearance is just Finder's way of working with the external. 🙂