What is the difference between an external hard drive and a portable hard drive?
I need a hard drive to save all my downloads for iTunes on so that I don't use up the computer space. I found an 500gb external hard drive for about 80$, and 160gb portable hard drive for about 110$. What's the difference between an external and portable, because it sounds like the same concept to me.
Western Digital 160GB Portable External Hard Drive | US $36.00 (9 Bids) End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 8:24:45 PST Bid now | Add to watch list |
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Posted in: Portable External Hard Drive
5 Responses
Mercuri - November 18, 2009
They are the same. Some people use “External” to mean that you still have to plug the hard drive into a wall outlet while a “Portable” one doesn’t need that as it gets it’s power from the USB port. “Portable” typically refers to a smaller hard drive as well.
Kasey C - November 18, 2009
None, really, except the portable ones are generally a bit smaller.
Most people consider “external” to be paperback book sized, whereas “portable” are like just a little larger than cigarette-pack size.
Cameron G - November 18, 2009
they are the exact same but some people don’t know the right word
but portable hard drives are pocket sizes kinda like a flash drive but a bit bigger and external hard drive is more of an at home one you plug into the wall. id go with the external 500gb for 80 rather than 160 for 110 500 is allot more and more useful my opinion.
Duran B - November 18, 2009
They are both the same thing
apim4u - November 18, 2009
Portable – basically laptop internal hard drive put in a compact case, connected to your machine through a USB, small in size and does not have a separate power cord.
External – a hard drive which is much robust in architecture (rather than internal), connects to your PC through USB but usually requires a separate power cord, usually quite bulky in size and can have huge data size . . somthing like 16 TB.