What You Need to Know about Portable Hard Drives

By Slade Spire


Portable hard drives come are small, external usb peripherals that attach to a laptop or home computer. Like regular hard drives they are used for storing computer data and files such as documents, music, photos and videos. They are small and can fit in the in the palm of your hand, making them very portable and convenient.

They are about the overall size of a television remote control store lots of data, the most capacities are anywhere from 500GB up to 2TB of storage. To get an idea of what that is, that is over 200,000 audio files, over 1,000 hrs of vids, or almost 150,000 photos!

It is not always easy figuring out the best drive for you. Its important to consider what you plan on using the drive for, as they have a lot of different uses. More often than not they are used for data backup. As such, many of the drives come with software that makes backing up files easy. External drives also are a great accessory to a laptop, since laptops usually have less space than desktop computers, you can easily add extra space with one of these drives.

As we have mentioned, external drives have multiple uses. One popular use is being able to trade files back and forth with another computer, this make it easy to exchange files with a friend. Alternatively, you may have some big home videos you would like to bring to your relatives house, since they are usb connected you can easily just pop them in a bag and plug them into their computer when you get there. Some home DVR's also allow you to expand the amount of space on them by plugging in an external hard drive. Just attach it via the usb port and you can record many more hours of tv.

Portable external drives are fun to use and carry around. Manufacturers have made them smaller and faster, and many come in really cool and sleek designs. Because they are transportable, some models have special cases that protect them from things like extreme heat, water, and even drops or falls.

Portable hard drives are easy to install, simply plug the drive into the usb port on your computer and you are ready to go. Most modern operating systems will instantly recognize the drive and you can begin using it immediately, no setup required. That is just another great feature of portable hard drives, and if you have important files on your computers, then you really can't do without one of these devices.




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