Internal vs External?

[alltheicons]

So with all the internal hard drive prices going up, I've been looking for more long term effective spending. Currently I bought a 60gb ssd sata3 for a boot drive, but I've been wondering what I should do for a data drive. Oddly enough externals seem to be a little cheaper than internal hard drives at the moment. I'm told USB 3.0 can transfer 5 gb's a second, while sata 3 can do 6 gb's a second. I guess what I am asking is; is there anything else in an external hard drive that slows that speed down? Or is the only thing I'm really looking at is rpm's?

 

[pro-gamer]

sata3 is the only best solution.

 

[DelroyMonjo]

Externals are slow.