Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Portable vs. wired hard drive for a laptop

Dec 3, 2010 11:17PM PST

I have a new Dell Studio and want an external hard drive for added storage and to prevent slow down. What are the disadvantages of the portable unit? Is the battery running down a problem?
It would be nice to have a portable so you didn't have to deal with a cord all the time, but I'm just not sure about how a portable compares in performance to a regular external HD.
Also, could you recommend a particular model with at least 500GB or preferably a little more?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Re: external drive
Dec 3, 2010 11:26PM PST

Let me start with a warning. External drives are far less reliable than internal drives. If you want to use it for storage, be sure to have a good backup of everything you put on it and don't want to lose. A second and third hard disk are fine, burning to DVD is fine, webbased storage is fine. Having no backup is a potential disaster.

An external hard drive always connects via a USB2-cable (or Firewire if you have a Mac). It can be USB-powered (which uses some power from the laptop, indeed) or externally powered (power adaptor). That doesn't make a difference for the performance.

Kees

- Collapse -
Kees addition question
Dec 4, 2010 1:35AM PST

Are you saying that a portable HD doesn't have its own battery - it just works off the laptops battery?

- Collapse -
(NT) That's correct.
Dec 4, 2010 3:24AM PST