Computer Hard Drive Types Based on External Interface

When purchasing an external hard disk drive, it is important that you note how the drive is connected to your computer. Your upgrade will be limited by the number of free ports on your PC.

There are three common computer hard drive types based on how they are externally attached to your computer: the FireWire hard drive, the USB hard drive and the eSATA hard drive.

* FireWire Hard Drive

The FireWire hard drive is attached to the computer via a FireWire port. FireWire has two versions — the FireWire 400 and the FireWire 800. FireWire 400 can support data transfer rates of up to 50 megabytes per second (MB/s), while FireWire 800 can support data transfer rates of up to 100MB/s.

* USB Hard Drive

The USB hard drive needs to be attached to a free USB port on your computer. USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. Similar to FireWire, USB has two standards — USB 1.1 and USB 2.0. USB 1.1 can support data transfer rates of up to 1.5MB/s, while USB 2.0 can support data transfer rates of up to 60MB/s.

* eSATA Hard Drive

The eSATA hard drive is the fastest among these three computer hard drive types. eSATA stands for external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. External hard drives that use eSATA technology are as fast as the internal SATA hard drives. They can support data transfer rates of 150MB/s and greater.

When buying an external hard drive as a new acquisition or as a computer hardware upgrade, always check if it has an interface that is supported by your computer. In some instances, you can buy adapter cards in order to use newer hard drives in an old computer. For instance, a PCI adapter card can enable you to hook a USB 2.0 hard drive on a PC that only has USB 1.1 ports.