External hard drives have the portability of a USB Flash Drive but with more storage capacity (and they are a lot bigger even though they are “portable”). The best part is that these drives have been dropping in price dramatically over the years. You can now get a lot of storage capacity for less than $150.

An external Hard Drive usually connects to a computer via the USB port (you want the faster USB 2.0 ports that come on computers sold in the last few years…not the USB 1.0 ports that run at only a fraction of the speed. The drive will most likely work…but you will have to give it a lot of time to transfer data) or sometimes an IEEE 1392 connection (also known as “firewire”).

These drives have so much capacity and are so easily moved from machine to machine that you might very well be able to back up multiple computers with the single drive.

If you happen to have an extra hard drive lying around not doing anything, it is also possible to purchase an external hard drive “enclosure.” The enclosure will allow you to install your hard drive into a portable box that has all of the necessary circuitry to turn your hard disk into a portable external hard disk system.

Below you can see a selection of external drives that can be shipped right to your door. You only need to weigh the cost of the drive against the amount of data you wish to store.