I'm not sure I know what you mean; I have limited experience with external HDs. I have an old Seagate and a less old Samsung. Both act like my C drive. Am I not using them the way I should be?
Right. So check it: every external drive you've ever seen is an internal drive with a dingus attached. That dingus takes it from SATA (typically) to USB or Firewire or Thunderbolt or whatever. Probably less of a problem with USB, but with Firewire it really fucking matters. For the longest time those of us who dealt with media and macs shared little lists of who was using a particular chip (Oxford 911). That only covers Firewire, though, and has long since been superseded. Seagate USB drivers are flaky as fuck. I've got like four WD Mybooks, all of them triple interface (USB3, Firewire 800, eSATA). The USB interface is usually great but slower than eSATA. Firewire works so long as you aren't expecting to use it for Time Machine that much. Probably not problems you run into on the PC side, but here in the land of Mac it matters.
That could be it. What sort of interfacing do you have on the computer side? I'm a big proponent of eSATA; the cards are cheap and they basically allow you to connect an external drive using the exact same protocol as an internal drive, no fuss, no muss. On the downside you need to unplug it before you disconnect it, but that's pretty minor most of the time.
Oh ok. It's USB. I don't move a whole lot of files too often, I just like to put everything on the external as I've had several computers stolen and had various mishaps where my computer at the time was rendered unusable for whatever reason. Whenever I'm able to get a new computer I think I might just get a desktop since I don't really need to bring a computer around with me (though that could change). Anyway, thanks.