External hard drive vs portable hard drive?

Answer 1

Short answer: An external hard disk is a removable hard disk.

Longer answer: A removable hard disk is any hard disk which is designed to be easily removed from the computer. This includes, but is not limited to, external hard disks. There are also internal hard disks which are removable via a special slot in the front of the machine. Flash-based usb thumb drives are also frequently referred to as "removable hard disks." Even though they are not hard disks at all the OS treats them as such, and so for all practical purposes they can be considered removable hard disks.

Answer 2

An internal hard drive is mounted inside a computer. An external hard drive is mounted in a box separate from the computer and connected to the computer by a wire. The actual hard disc can be identical it is just the location that is the difference.

Answer 3

An external hard drive gets its power from an AC-DC adaptor. A portable hard drive draws it's power directly from the device its plugged into, via a usb connection, and requires no additional power source.

Answer 4

In most respects, they are very similar. External hard drives are typically nothing more than a laptop or desktop hard drive in a proprietary enclosure. The enclosure converts power and data sent over the USB or FireWire port into the equivalent IDE or PATA signals (eSATA drives require no translation).

Answer 5

They are both the same.

But the only way of expressing both is that portable hard drive are much smaller and don't hold as much capacity, and can be easily vunerable to damage.

Desktop External Hard drive stores a lot of data, they are not easily damaged but costs a lot more money, and they have fans to keep them cool.

so i would go for desktop external hard drive.

Answer 6

The internal hard drive is inside your computer and permanently attached to it. It is the default place to store documents, files, the operating system and so on. An external hard drive is a separate device which you can plug in and out, usually with a USB connector. They are often used for backing up files or transferring them between two computers.

Answer 7

External hard drive is bigger than removable hard disk, although both are removable from the computer. Moreover, the external HDD has much more storage space than pen-drives.

Answer 8

An internal hard drive is contained in the computer. On the other hand, an external hard drive is something like a USB that is a hard drive outside a computer.

Answer 9

The internal hard drives will usually cost you more since they are manufacturer specific. The external hard drives are cheaper and more abundant.