If you want to expand your portable storage, you are probably thinking about either an external hard drive or a more convenient flash drive. So what are the differences? Is one better than the other?
Hard drives offer the most storage for the price, yet it comes at the expense of speed. While HDDs offer the best value for the price with regards to storage, read/witre speeds for hard drives commonly top out at 200MB/sec, with the quickest (internal) drives estimating 198MB/sec speed. Most drives will be USB 3.0 or better at this stage, which offers a maximum speed of about 640MB/sec, which is fast enough for the drive’s internal capacities.
More slow speeds are not the main thing keeping them down. These need to start up before the information can be accessed. This can amount to 10 seconds to each read and write request, depending upon whether the drive is already running. A mechanical arm should then get across the platter to read or write data.
USB Flash Drives: Small, Portable, and Quick
In the event that storage is less important than speed or portability, a USB flash drive might be a better decision. The main downside to picking a USB flash drive is its capacity. The current biggest drives top out at 1TB. You could get an 8TB external drive for around a similar price.
These high-performing flash drives have read speed of 420MB/sec or better. Flash drives have no spinning platters, and no additional time for start up. If you can find a flash drive that has a capacity that is large enough for your requirements, it can be faster, more reliable, and better portability. Just make sure that has a speed of USB 3.0.
External SSDs: The Best of Both Worlds (at a Price)
In the event that you have purchased a laptop in the last five years or so, it is likely that it includes solid state drive (SSD). These drives are like versatile USB drives in that they use flash storage cells as opposed to a spinning platter to store data. The advantage is that they are available in higher capacities.
The disadvantage is that SSDs are more expensive than the other options. With an SSD, you’re paying for both speed and solidness. The fastest (intenal) SSDs can reach speed of around 3750MB/sec.
