With so many people using computers, storing data and transporting data it is no wonder that portable hard drives are extremely popular and practical. Here are some tips on buying portable hard drives.

There are two main types of portable hard drives. Portable hard drives made to store computer files and miniature portable hard drives which are components in some Mp3 players. Many people that use portable hard drives to back up their computer usually use external hard drives that connect easily and can be transported effortlessly. External portable hard drives connect to your computer using a USB hard drive. They are extremely easy to install and you can read or write your data onto one main computer or connect the external hard drive to many computers. Many external hard drives come in small packages that fit into an external hard drive slot. This way if you have more than one external hard drive, you can constantly interchange them by putting the portable external hard drive into the slot.

Miniature hard drives are now becoming extremely popular. When they first came out they were very expensive, but today you can find many devices that can easily store data and transport this data from one computer to another with ease. Most iPOD's have miniature portable hard drives. These miniature portable hard drives are about the size of a quarter and can hold from 10 GB of data to over 120 GB of data easily. Just because they are in an IPOD or other type of mp3 player doesn't mean that you can't use them to back up your data or store many different types of files. For great storage capacity and ease of use, look into portable hard drives.