What is a portable hard drive?

Question

Okay, I may sound ignorant, but what exactly is a portable hard drive? Can they act like a normal hard drive? Do you run an OS on them? Can you install programs on them? How much are they? What's the difference between that and a flash drive?

Answer 1

A portable hd usually refers to a USB connected harddrive that is use to store data. However, newer systems can boot from USB drives (or CDs depending on your OS) and you can use it to intstall your OS. (Not typical however.)

Your OS usually will treat them like a regular harddrive and you can install programs on them, however you wouldn't normally do this since installing programs will usually add entries to the drive where the operating system is to tell the program how to run.

A flash drive refers to "flash memory" these are chip based drives that have no moving parts. Good to carry files around with you. (refered to as key drives sometimes as you can carry one on your keyring) A portable hard drive is more of an external hard drive and has the same technology as one in your PC. (moving parts - a little more likely to damage.)

A flash drive is usally 256 megabytes to 2 gigabytes. USB hard drives can be 10 gigabytes or larger, up to a terabyte. (1000 gigabytes.)

In both cases, you usually want to have all your OS files and programs local to the machine and keep or backup your data on the portable type drives.

Answer 2

Portable means just that; you can easily move it from one computer to another. Typically, these are connected using a USB interface.

You can save anything on them, including programs, but remember that in Windows, programs typically install files not only in the program directory but in other system directories and even update the registry. So, if you install a program on a portable drive, it should be a self-contained program that doesn't use registry settings.

The cost of the drive runs from say $50 and up. The enclosure can be from $20 and up. I just made a portable drive using a laptop 40gb drive and an enclosure. The enclosure was $25 from newegg.com.

The flash drive is all electronic and currently is much less space than a mechanical hard drive. They're also much smaller.

Answer 3

Exactly what it sounds like. It is a small hard drive (either solid state or with the typical spinning disk) which can be easily plugged/unplugged from your computer (generally via a USB port).

Once plugged in, your computer recognizes it as another hard drive on the system and you can write to or read from it the same as your "C" drive.

Smaller (size not capacity) ones allow you to transport huge amounts of data without having to carry your computer. You simply take the hard drive to the 'next' computer and plug it in.

Even the now-common memory sticks/ flash drives are treated as portable hard drives by your computer they just (generally) much smaller in capacity (2 gigs or less typically).

A 100 GB solid state hard drive will run you between $75 to $125 in many computer stores while the 'spinning disk' variey with 300 to 500 gb may set you back about $300. Generally those models require (and come with) an external power supply while the solid state small ones run off the USB power.

Does that help???

Answer 4

A portable hard drive is a drive that can be moved easily between computers. They are typically used for additional storage of files.

You can put an OS on it, but that could cause problems when you have it connected to another computer running it's own OS. As for installing programs on one, I guess you could, but you can only run the programs on it if it is turned on and connected to the computer you're using.

The prices will range on the external drives depending on size, type of drive (usb vs. firewire), speed, brand, etc.

Answer 5

It is a hard drive, which is portable, because it is small in size (about 3x5 inches) and connects to your computer usually via a USB connection. Think of it as a giant floppy drive because it works like one (except for the need for a USB cord). They come in varying sizes -- 20G, 40G, up to about 250G. The price is commensurate with the size. As of this writing, a 40G portable hard drive is about $70 - although you can get them on sale if you watch the ads.

"When used to describe hardware, portable means small and lightweight. A portable computer is a computer small enough to carry. Portable computers include notebook and subnotebook computers, hand-held computers, palmtops, and PDAs.
(2) When used to describe software, portable means that the software has the ability to run on a variety of computers. Portable and machine independent mean the same thing—that the software does not depend on a particular type of hardware. "

Answer 6

They are hard drives that you can plug and unplug (usually by USB) into PCs and carry around or store. They're basically the same as a flash drive but bigger both in storage space and size. For example you can get one 300GB or higher. Yes you can install programs on them and even run an OS on them but the BIOS in your pc will determine if you can boot of them or not. They cost just a little more than an internal hard drive.

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=414&name=External-Hard-Drives

Answer 7

the difference is, portables are potable. did that help? portables are usually small enough to fit in a pocket. externals are designed to not be moved much. you could use a portable as an external, and vice versa, but it would be inconvenient. you cannot usually save data directly to either, if you mean, automatically. you usually have the one extra step of telling the computer to save it to the external/portable. but, yes, anything you can save to the hard drive can be saved to the external/portable. operating systems and their files should not be save to an external/portable. unless you know of a way for your computer to work when yopu remove the portable/external.

Answer 8

A portable hard drive is a disk drive that is plugged into an external port on a computer such as a USB port or FireWire. They are usually used for backup, but also are used as secondary storage. Its named portable because it is easily detached from your computer and can transfer large files between computer systems.

Answer 9

External hard drives are hold much much more than flash drives. Flash drives usually go up to about 2GB capacity, while external drives can start at 40GB of capacity. If I remember correctly, you cannot boot from an external hard drive, so putting OS on them is questionable.