Sizes of External Hard Drives

External hard drives have become an essential computer add-on particularly for those who have hundreds upon hundreds of files that need to be stored; i.e. documents, pictures and music.

While computers normally come with an internal hard drive, whether this is a desktop computer or a laptop; oftentimes, this hard drive has not enough capacity to store everything that you want to keep especially since it is very likely that you accumulate files on a daily basis.

This is where external hard drives come into play. There are various sizes of external hard drives that you can find today and these are basically broken down into two categories: desktop and portable.

Sizes of External Hard Drives

Memory Capacity

While sizes of external hard drives are basically a choice between a desktop external hard drive and a laptop model, sizes of these hard drives are likewise determined by their capacity.

External hard drive capacities are the size of the memory that they come with. These days, you can find sizes of external hard drives capacity-wise, starting at 320 GB and going all the way up to 2TB or terra bytes.

Basically, your choices for memory size are 320 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB and 2 TB. If you are simply looking at an external hard drive to store just your important files, with the external hard drive serving as back-up a 320 GB capacity could be enough for you.

For the most part however, people choose to go with hard drive with the highest possible memory size to give them more storage space in the event that they will want to transfer all of their files from the desktop or laptop into their extra external hard drive.

Dimensions

As for sizes of external hard drives dimension-wise, as mentioned above you have two options: desktop and laptop external hard drive.

Desktop

Sizes of external hard drives for your desktop are actually not much bigger than the portable, laptop models. These usually start at 4.9 inches in width by 8 inches in depth by 1.4 inches in height and weigh around 2.2 pounds.

Manufacturers usually have capacities for the desktop model starting at 500 GB and then 1 TB, 1.5 TB and finally, 2 TB.

Now, if you need more storage space, there are likewise some models that have 3 TB capacities and these usually measure around 5 inches in width by 4.5 inches in height and weigh approximately 2.74 pounds.

Portable

Portable external hard drives allow you to easily carry these around especially when you travel for business. These enable you to have all the files that you need for that presentation or sales pitch without having to carry your laptop with you at all times.

Sizes of external hard drives that are of the portable model are generally around 4.3 inches in width by 3.3 inches in depth by 0.7 inch in height and weigh around 7.1 ounces.

Smaller models measure approximately 3.5 inches in width by 0.9 inch in height and weigh only 0.62 pounds.

These also come in a variety of colors from black to silver, blue and red.