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External Hard Drives

External hard drives are a great way to add disk capacity to any home or business computer, whether it is configured as a desktop or laptop. External hard drives have been around for many years, but with recent improvements in technology, today’s external hard drives are more reliable, portable and affordable than ever.

External hard drives come in many varieties, usually based on how they connect to the host computers. External hard drives can connect via a USB Port, PCMCIA IDE card, Parallel Port, via FireWire and via SCSI. While most of the external hard drives today usually use a USB Port to connect to the host computer, some have the added functionality of being accessed on the device itself (usually media files such as mp3, digital photos and video).

The overwhelming majority of external hard drives are portable in that they can be easily carried from one place to another. Most of these external hard drives are small enough to fit in your pocket and already contain the power unit (either powered by the USB Port or the unit includes an electrical plug). Other, older external hard drives are usually bigger and bulkier. They usually fit into a slot that is connected directly to your computer. The slot includes a power unit and connection point.

External hard drives are considered storage units, but differ from other types of storage such as flash memory and SD memory cards due to the fact that they contain moving parts. Most current external hard drive units can be moved during use (for instance, external hard drive mp3 players); however, older units may need to be in a stable environment with no movement to function properly.

External hard drive are an excellent storage choice, they usually only cost a few cents per megabyte of storage and are great for end users that require more storage space or greater security.