Welcome to My 1TB Portable Hard Drive! We’re excited to offer you a one stop source for everything you need to know in choosing the best portable hard drive that fits your needs. Our goal is to give you the most accurate information we can on hard drives so that you feel comfortable about your choice overall.

Hard Disk Drives, or HDD’s, are built to either be placed inside your desktop or laptop computer, or externally for portable use. Hard drives placed inside a computer are normally meant to stay there unless your computer encounters a hardware failure, requiring you to remove it. Portable hard drives are meant to do just as it reads – be “portable”. They connect to your PC via USB cable and in some cases wireless. A portable hard drive has many uses including the ability to transfer files from one computer to another.

Today you’ll find that hard drive space is much cheaper than years past. As with many computer components, they were a bit more expensive back when Bill Gates first came into the picture. Now you can buy a 1TB Portable Hard Drive for much less then what 100MB, or “Megabyte”, cost us just 20 years ago.

Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Ultra Portable External Hard Drive

1TB – Just How Big is a Terabyte? How Much Data Can It Store?
Most of us can remember those pesky 3.5” floppy disks. 1 terabyte is equal to about 728,177 floppy disks. It’s also equal to about 1,310 writable CD’s, and about 227 writable DVD’s. Let’s give you an idea of how much you can expect to store on a 1TB portable hard drive:

• Songs – 250k
  
• Digital Photos – 284k
  
• Digital Videos – 820

Portable Hard Drive Housing
This day and age everything is about convenience. The more convenient something is, the more people gravitate towards it. Hard Drive manufacturers have realized this and made disk storage more accessible than ever before. They provide this ease of use in a variety of housings, or “form factors”. These different types of form factors should be considered when choosing your portable hard drive.

Portable hard drives are distributed in many different form factors. They range from larger, heavier units, to sizes as small as a thumb nail. Some companies have gotten creative and placed portable hard drive units inside every day use items such as wrist watches. There are portable hard drives for every use you can imagine. The placement of how you want your drive is something to consider as well. Ensure you choose a drive that fits your given space requirement, whatever that may be. Do you want to store your drive in a small drawer? Choose a portable hard drive that lays down flat and doesn’t require power of any kind. Are you looking for a drive that’s a bit more portable? Choose a 1TB portable hard drive that is 2.5” or 3.5” in size, so that it’s lighter and less bulky as the heavier drives.

» Go to Part 2 - Hard Drive Speed