Typically an external drive requires a power cord or brick of some type in addition to it's data cable attached to a desktop computer. My external drives are now 3terrabytes in size, plug into my computer via an aSata cable.
A portable drive is a smaller drive usually 1 terabyte or less, that has a USB or FireWire cable for both data connectivity and power from the laptop computer's bus. These are what I travel with in addition to my laptop.
There are USB 3.0 portable drives now, and we will soon have Thunderbolt enabled portable drives as well.
External drives are typically 3.5 inch internal drives used outside the computer box in some sort of arrangement whether a dedicated RAID array, or an external dock of some sort.
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A portable drive is a smaller drive usually 1 terabyte or less, that has a USB or FireWire cable for both data connectivity and power from the laptop computer's bus. These are what I travel with in addition to my laptop.
There are USB 3.0 portable drives now, and we will soon have Thunderbolt enabled portable drives as well.
External drives are typically 3.5 inch internal drives used outside the computer box in some sort of arrangement whether a dedicated RAID array, or an external dock of some sort.
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