> How to > Backup Utility > What is an External/Removable Hard Drive?

What is an External/Removable Hard Drive?

Updated on Nov 30, 2017 by Jean to Backup Utility

Summary:
What is an external hard drive or removable hard drive? This article introduces the basic knowledge about external hard drive/removable hard drive and recommends a free backup software - EaseUS Todo Backup Free to back up your files to external hard drive.

An External/Removable hard drive is any hard drive which attaches to a port on the outside of a computer case. External hard drives are extremely useful for backing up computers and for moving data between computers.

External Hard Drive Interfaces

External hard drives can be connected using several popular interfaces. One external hard drive may support two or more of these interfaces.

FireWire

FireWire, almost known as IEEE 1394, is a popular interface for Macintosh external hard drives and became somewhat popular on PC's before USB 2.0 was standardized.

USB

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a standard for connecting a wide range of devices, including external hard drives, PDA's, and Sony PlayStations.

USB 1.x was not fast enough to satisfy most users of external hard drives. USB 2.0 provides slightly better performance than FireWire in most applications.

eSATA

eSATA is the newest standard for external hard drives.

eSATA is an extension of the Serial ATA standard which allows the use of external hard drives.An external hard drive using an eSATA connection will not suffer a performance penalty imposed by encapsulating the ATA data inside the USB or FireWire protocols because the eSATA external hard drive uses the same communications protocol as the internal hard drives.

Ethernet

A few external hard drives offer Ethernet connections.

These drives include intelligent electronics to enable them to act like file servers.

These external hard drives are actually low-end network attached storage devices.

How to backup to external/removable hard drive

Backup software - EaseUS Todo Backup can help you store image files to the local hard drive, external/removable hard drive, DVD, network and USB drive for the consideration of the security of backup files. Here, we will give an introduction of how to backup your data to the external/removable hard drive.

Disk and Partition Backup Software, EaseUS Todo Backup