A disk drive that is plugged into an external port on a computer such as USB or FireWire. Typically used for backup, but also as secondary storage, such units rival internal drives in capacity. For laptops, the PC Card slot may be used to connect a cable to a full-size drive, or the hard disk may be contained entirely inside the PC Card. See USB drive.
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| Portable Hard Disk |
| Plugging into a USB 2.0 or FireWire port, Iomega's HDD Portable Hard Drive provides 30GB of external backup or secondary storage. (Image courtesy of Iomega Corporation.) |
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| PC Card Drive |
| The hard disk is entirely contained in this PC Card from Toshiba. PC Card drives are the simplest addition to a laptop computer, because they all have PCMCIA slots. The PC Card interface may also be used to plug in a cable from a very large portable hard drive. |
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