New Shutr

The very large array of choices that confront people looking to buy a laptop external hard drive can be a bit confusing. This is especially the case because there are so many different sorts and different specifications available. But in truth finding one is not that complicated and really boils down to a few choices.
The first is whether you want one that is very portable and doesn’t require an external hard drive or whether you want one for home use. If you are looking for the smallest possible laptop external hard drive then you should probably consider one that is powered by the USB outlet on your laptop. These are often pocket-sized storage devices and they can come in large capacities. You can easily slip one into your laptop case without even noticing it is there. A common brand is Western Digital which makes the range of thin passport drives that offer a good balance of storage capacity and portability. These are relatively cheap too and you can easily store 500GB in such a drive.
Often, however, you will want a drive for home use that offers faster transfer speeds. In that case you may want to think about a drive that connects via Firewire. This offers really high speeds for transferring data and it is great for big files such as DVDs and the like. In this case you need an external power supply and you usually end up with a much bigger package. You really do end up trading off speed for portability.
Another possibility is a network drive. These come with a variety of connections and are intended to be used by several computers in a household or small office. The great advantage is that it allows you to easily share folders across the whole network. Many people use these in the office for collaborative projects but also at home where they may, for instance, want to access a music library from several computers.