Silly External HDD question

[PARANOiA]

I'm about to buy my sixth HDD because I'm mostly out of disk space. I have four HDD's between 100 and 200gb in my box which are my "normal" drives (game installs, Windows, images, photos, MP3s, "temporary" drive for downloads before I put them somewhere permanent) plus a 500gb drive for random stuff and movies which just hit its limit.

My question is... if I buy an external HDD enclosure plus a 3.5" SATA HDD, will the speeds be fast enough to use it as my permanent movie drive? Would I be able to stream HD video over USB or will it be too slow? Do the USB 2.0 versions actually hit their theoretical speed limit - and if so, can that stream a movie at 720p/1080p?

Cheers

 

[Bludd]

USB 2 is 480 Mbit/sec, so unless you have a lot of USB stuff taking up all that capacity, you should be fine. No movie has a data rate that high anyway.

I think you will be fine.

 

[Davros]

if the external enclosure supports sata you'd be best using that, next best is firewire then usb 2