all USB HDDs i ever had was IDE or S-ATA with a adapter to USB inside

Yes, they are PATA or SATA drives with adapters. But think twice about buying a external drive: there were some problems with seagate drivers recently, and you won't know what kind of drive is inside the external enclosure before buying.

ratfink wrote:

I need a bigger hard drive for my X4 box. I wanted an internal one, but I see that external drives seem to be cheaper - eg 1tb external seagate is £70 but an internal seagate barracuda SATA 1tb is £90 and [same outlet] an OEM pata internal 1tb is £100.

Wondered if anyone knew if some of these externals were just internal drives in a cheap caddy [with a usb/sata or usb/pata adapter]?

My guess is that they tend to put somewhat older drive models in external drives and sell the quick brandnew single platters as OEM or retail. Atleast thats what I think, I don't know for a fact if it's this way