There are currently two main types of external hard drives: solid-state drives (or mechanical hard drives) and solid state hybrid drives (SSHD, also called hybrid hard drives or optical drives). An SSD is generally faster, lighter, more power-efficient, and cheaper than a conventional HDD drive, while a HDD will be slightly more expensive than the latter.

For most people, the biggest difference between a hard drive and an external hard drive is that an internal hard drive consists of mechanical parts. They consist of a head (or platter), which is the part where data is stored and accessed, and rotating disks in a traditional computer or laptop computer. This is why most external drives are often referred to as “internal” drives.

However, there are several physical parts of an external drive that looks almost identical to an internal hard drive, such as the platter or the case (cases and enclosures are sometimes called housings, too). However, they are not made from solid-state components, although they have similar characteristics. One key difference between an external hard drive and an internal hard drive is that external drives are usually smaller than internal hard drives, and they can take several different forms.

When you purchase an external hard drive you get the case (also known as the casing) and the other parts which fit into it. While this may seem to be a lot of things to buy, it’s still a small price to pay compared to the advantages that they give you.

Solid state drives are relatively fast. They’re also more reliable than other hard drives. Because they’re usually much more compact and light, they also make it easier to transport, which makes them convenient for transferring files between computers or even between laptops. If you want to transfer data quickly from one hard drive to another, you’ll find that an external hard drive is definitely the way to go.

Because of their compact size, the solid-state drive also makes transferring large files much easier and quicker. They’re so small that they’re virtually invisible to the naked eye when compared to a conventional hard drive. They’re also very reliable and long-lasting. {and can even withstand extreme temperatures such reliability means that it’s always best to buy a reliable hard drive, regardless of whether it’s for personal use or business.

Even if you have a traditional PC, it’s still worth buying an external hard drive as well because they can be transferred to and from PCs much more easily than a hard drive. Hard drives need to be plugged into a USB port (Universal Serial Bus), making it difficult if not impossible to transfer a file from a hard drive to a portable device like your iPhone or iPod Touch. If you want to transfer a file from an external hard drive to a traditional computer, though, then you won’t have to do anything, since it will be directly written to the hard drive.

Although the prices of solid-state drives vary, they are generally comparable to other solid-state drives. In fact, they are now cheap enough that you can even afford to have more than one at home. And if you’ve got lots of important documents and files stored on these devices, you might want to invest in two or three, and use them for backup purposes.

Even if you’re going to use an external hard drive exclusively for your files, you should still have an internal hard drive for other purposes. There are times when you might have to access files offsite on your computer, and if you don’t have a backup external hard drive, it will be very difficult if not impossible to get to these files.

So when it comes to getting a solid-state drive, you really just need to decide which kind of work you need to do. – want it for personal use, or to backup files or your other files.

Storage capacity is what is most important. This is where the prices can vary. There are some which are quite large – hundreds of gigabytes, even terabytes, and others which are fairly small – several hundred megabytes but the size is largely irrelevant to anyone who uses them for data.