Is that a hard drive in your pocket?
For some people, portability is everything. Instead of just using their hard drive as a back-up left safely at home, they want access to all their documents, spreadsheets, photos, and whatever other files they have wherever they are and whoever they’re meeting. I know a guy who works for an engineering firm who needs access to a lot of technical documents but doesn’t want to slow down his laptop by having them all stored on his local drive, so keeps them all on an external hard drive and takes this to meetings with him (leaving a back up safely stored elsewhere of course!).
If you do need to take your drive with you when you’re out and about, you’ll probably be after something that’s smaller than usual, lightweight and will slip into a jacket pocket, handbag or laptop bag without any trouble. You’ll also probably be interested in a drive that’s simply plug and play and doesn’t need an external power source to get it up and running (which would be one more thing to carry with you…).
Even if you don’t need to take your drive out and about with you very often, you still might be after one that’s small, lightweight and easy to store out of the way at home.
Fortunately there are loads of external hard drives that fit the bill across all budgets, and these are some of the best:
The Buffalo Ministation is the successor to the highly successful Juststore Slimline model and is truly one of the simplest external hard drives available on the market today. It’s about the size of a wallet and weighs only 165g, making it incredibly portable. It is a USB powered, plug’n’play device that will allow you to take your music, films, photos and documents with you, and sports a file transfer rate of up to 480Mbps. Read more >>>
Western Digital My Passport Essential SE (1TB): 
Roughly the size of a passport, this drive has proven amazingly popular with an average amazon rating of 4 stars on amazon.com from nearly a thousand reviews! This model can hold 1TB of data, and now supports both USB 2.0 and 3.0, backs up files on an incremental basis to minimise the time required and includes password protection and encryption. Oh and you don’t have to get it in black either, this model comes in silver, blue and red too! Read more >>>
Samsung S2 USB 2.0 1TB Ultraslim Portable Hard Drive:
The Samsung S2 Portable is an “ultraslim” external hard drive, designed for portability. Whilst it weighs in at just under 200g, it can still hold 1TB of data which is plenty for most people, and is USB powered, making it perfect for you if you’re out and about but need access to lots of large digital files. It has an auto backup function, and comes with pre-installed backup software, as well as a freebie travel case. The S2 is also plug’n’play straight from the box, meaning no tedious installation CDs and all the hassle that can bring! Read more >>>
The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex lives up to its billing as one of the best portable – make that “ultraportable” – external hard drives available on the market today, and comes in a variety of storage sizes (including a chunky 1.5TB drive) and colours (red, silver, black, blue). Powered by USB connection, the GoFlex FreeAgent comes with a USB 2.0 interface as standard but Seagate provide an innovative upgrade option for USB 3.0, FireWire 800 or powered eSATA by pairing the device with a separately available cable. Read more >>>
The 500Gb version of this device weighs just 150g, and uses USB 3.0 bus powered connection to reach data transfer speeds of up to 5Gbps. Also has a green energy saving button to suspend the hard drive from spinning when not in use. Read more >>>
It’s important to note that some of the best external hard drives are deliberately not portable – in that they are designed for single location, generally desktop usage and come with external power supply (these tend to be bigger drives that require more power than a USB connection can supply). Having said that, the best external hard drives for portability reviewed here will tick all the boxes for when you need your files out and about… no questions asked!
Tagged: Best For Portability, Buffalo Juststore Slimline, external hard drive, featured, HP SimpleSave Portable HD, Iomega eGo Portable, portable hard drive, Samsung S2 Portable 3.0 HX-MTA64DA, seagate goflex, Verbatim Store n Go, Western Digital My Passport Essential
Got something to say? Click here to reply
