Types Of External Hard Drives

The 4 Types Of External Hard Drives

Portable External Hard Drives

These are handy and light weight hard drives that serve your storage needs efficiently wherever you go. Small enough to easily slip into your pocket or handbag, they are perfect not only in terms of size but also in the high capacity they offer. Though the typical interface is USB 2.0, we are starting to see USB 3.0 with USB 2.0 compatibility being offered in some excellent models like the Western Digital My Passport Essential USB 3.0 Ultra Portable Drive and the Toshiba Canvio USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive.

Desktop External Hard Drives

Slightly bigger in size, desktop external hard drives offer even higher storage capacity as compared to the portable ones. These are ideal for personal use at home or in the office and can cater to even the most demanding user's storage requirements. Simple and reliable, this is a very affordable option of adding storage.

Personal Cloud Storage Drives

One of the latest technological innovations in external hard drives, personal cloud storage drives offers users many advantages. These include easy backup of all the computers on your home network, centralizing and sharing media, streaming media to your entertainment center, and lots more. You have the flexibility to create your very own personal cloud with centralized storage and automatic wireless backup. It is also great for storing digital media and sharing photos, videos and music on your network.

NAS (Network Attached Storage) Drives

This is ideal for creating additional storage space and file sharing in a small office environment. Other than storing and sharing files on a single external hard drive, all the computers on the network can also be configured for automatic and continuous backup. The NAS drives typically offer versatile and powerful RAID capability that may be essential to a company's IT needs.

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