- An external hard drive is a piece of equipment that can be connected to your computer to increase its storage space.
- Unlike the hard drive that's installed in your computer, an external hard drive is portable and can also be used to store files from multiple devices.
- External hard drives are easy to use, convenient, and an incredibly safe way to backup your most important files.
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Storage space on a computer is valuable, but it's not infinite. The hard drive that's inside your computer can only fit so much data before it fills up.
As a solution, many users have turned to cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox. But if you're looking for a more concrete way to manage your files, you might want to invest in an external hard drive .
External hard drives are a great way to free up storage space and safely backup your files. Here's what you should know about them.
External hard drives, explained
An external hard drive is a device, usually around the size of a book, that you can store any file or app on. If you've ever used a USB flash drive, external hard drives are essentially the same thing, but bigger and with more storage space.
The difference between an external hard drive and the hard drive in your computer is that an external drive is portable you can disconnect it at any time and move it around, without losing the data inside.