Whether you create content, play games, or simply have too much digital stuff for your computer’s internal storage capacity, an external hard drive is worth adding to your work equipment. They’re convenient, often portable, and even the best external hard drives are quite affordable these days. Lots of them are seeing offers right now, and we’ve done the hard work of searching for them for you. You’ll find external hard drive offerings from brands like Western Digital, SanDisk, and even Samsung among them, and many of them are custom-made for things like gaming and content storage.
Today’s best deals on external hard drives
If you’re looking for more storage space, one of the best external hard drive deals today is the Western Digital Easystore external hard drive. It comes with a whopping 22TB of storage and an impressive price tag of just $400. This is a savings of $200 off the regular price of $600. Many of the best SSDs are also a great option for external storage, as they’re even more portable than spinning external drives, and they’re much faster. The SanDisk Extreme Pro 2TB External SSD is currently an impressive $120 off, dropping its price from $295 to just $175.
FAQ about the offer of external hard drives
How to choose an external hard drive
The first two steps in choosing an external hard drive are setting your budget and determining the size you need. As cheap as storage per gigabyte is today, the classic trade-off between hard drive size and portability still applies; in fact, is your primary consideration storage space or physical size? If your external hard drive is for home and office use on a single workstation and will more or less stay in one place, then storage space is more valuable than mobility. If, on the other hand, you frequently transfer data from one computer to another, a portable hard drive might be a better choice, even if you sacrifice some storage space for a smaller footprint.
What exactly you use your hard drive for will also influence your purchasing decision. If your external HDD or SSD is just for storing files, then this is pretty straightforward, but if you’ll be reading and writing to your external storage regularly (for example, editing videos directly from the drive itself, rather than from your computer’s system drive), the you’ll be sure to get something that has good read and write speeds and uses the latest connectivity standards like USB 3.0. For more details on external hard drive design and features to look out for when making your purchasing decision, read on.
HDD vs. SSD
Storage drives generally fall into two main categories: traditional hard drives, or HDDs, and solid-state drives, or SSDs. Until recently, most hard drives were mechanical HDDs. They have movable disks (called platters) inside, where the data itself is written and read. These traditional hard drives have largely fallen out of favor for use as system drives, but their larger capacities and much lower cost per gigabyte mean they are still a very popular choice for external storage.
In recent years, we have witnessed a revolution in solid-state drives. These drives are basically a type of flash memory, where data is written to chips rather than magnetic platters – this means there are no moving parts, which in turn means faster read/write speeds, as well as (in theory) increased long-term reliability. However, these drives tend to be smaller and significantly more expensive per gigabyte than hard drives; the trade-off is that they’re what you’ll usually find when looking for portable external hard drives that are small enough to carry in your pocket.
There are also hybrid hard drives, sometimes called SSHDs. These hybrid drives are essentially HDDs that have built-in flash storage (usually a fairly small amount) where your most frequently used files are stored and read, combining much of the responsiveness of SSDs with the larger storage capacity of HDDs. This might be worth the price if you need the increased HDD storage but expect to do a lot of active reading and writing to the external drive.
Are all external hard drives SSDs?
Almost any hard drive can be used as an external drive with the appropriate hard drive enclosure, and they are available as both SSD and HDD. Although SSDs are quickly replacing HDDs for use as internal system drives (the hard drive inside your computer that houses your operating system and other software), HDDs still remain extremely popular for external use because they are much, much cheaper per gigabyte and therefore give you a lot more storage capacity for your dollar.
Are external hard drives reliable?
An external hard drive is simply any HDD or SSD — like those found in laptops and desktops — that sits inside an external enclosure. This enclosure has some way of connecting the hard drive to your computer or other device, usually a USB port, and may also (depending on size) have some sort of power adapter. This means that an external hard drive will be just as reliable as any internal hard drive as long as it comes from a reputable manufacturer. Stick to trusted manufacturers like Western Digital, Seagate, SanDisk, Samsung and Kingston and your data should be safe.
Are external hard drives fast?
A very important thing to consider is read and write speed (the speed at which data is downloaded from and loaded onto the hard drive), but this is less of a potential pitfall than it was in the past. Even traditional rotary hard disk drives (HDDs) today offer pretty solid read/write speeds, with 7,200 rpm as standard. Be sure to check this out and avoid those using the older 5400rpm standard, although they are rarer now. Solid-state drives naturally offer the best read/write speeds, but, as discussed above, they offer the lowest value per gigabyte.
Also, don’t overlook connection speeds. The highest read/write speeds will be a bottleneck when transferring data over a connection that uses an older standard like USB 2.0. Make sure your external hard drive uses at least USB 3.0 (which is about ten times faster than USB 2.0 by comparison).
Do external hard drives need power?
Hard drives are electronic devices that need power from some external source, but that doesn’t mean that all external hard drives have to be plugged into the wall. Most can usually get enough power from the same USB connection they use to transfer data, but larger HDDs may require the external AC adapter that comes with the hard drive. This isn’t a huge issue for most, but it’s something to be aware of if power outlets are prime real estate where you’ll be placing your drive.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn