Back Ground Of The External Hard Disk
The original external hard disk was gigantic. Possibly 100 times bigger than todays and only capable of holding just a few megabytes of data !. In those days files was held externally to the computer so it really earned the name external hard disk. Because of the lack of capacity these external hard disks were swappable so the large mainframe computer could get access to more data.
The External hard Disk These days
With the end of the 20th century, internal drives took over as system of choice for personal computers running Windows, while external hard drives continued to be popular for much longer on the Apple Macintosh and also other professional workstations which supplied external SCSI ports. Apple made such interfaces accessible by default from 1986 and 1998. The addition of USB and Firewire interfaces to standard personal computers led these kind of drives to become commonplace in the PC market also. These new interfaces supplanted the more complicated and high priced SCSI interfaces, leading to standardization and cost savings for the external hard drive.
The internal framework of external hard disk drives resembles typical hard disk drives; actually, they include a normal hard disk drive which is mounted in a disk enclosure. For an external hard disk now the capacities range from 160 GB to 4TB and the cost per gigabyte varies between .15 and .40 USD.
As an external hard disk retains the platters and moving heads of traditional hard drives they are much less tolerant of physical jolts than flash-based technology (a fact often overlooked by customers lulled into a false sense of ruggedness by their styling).
Larger versions often include full-sized 3.5″ PATA or SATA desktop hard drives, can be purchased in the same size ranges, and typically carry a similar cost. More expensive models, particularly drives with biometric security or several interfaces, usually cost significantly more per gigabyte. Smaller, portable 2.5″ drives intended for laptop and embedded devices are a bit more expensive in cost per GB compared with larger capacity 3.5″ drives. Small MP3 players, previously built around mechanical hard drive technology are now primarily solid state CompactFlash based devices.
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