What type of drive do I need?
External drives are generally available as either an HDD or SSD. These are almost identical to the drives that are used for internal storage, they just use USB in lieu of SATA. Each type of storage has their own advantages.
A Hard Disk Drive, or HDD, utilises spinning platters which are thin discs manufactured from a range of materials, such as aluminium, glass, or ceramics. These disks are then coated in a magnetic material, which is what stores your data. Multiple disks are stacked on top of one another, then spun at high speeds, generally between 5000-7000RPM. An actuator arm moves the read/write heads over the platters, which then encode your data or read any existing data.
An HDD is the more budget-friendly solution, with the price per gigabyte being lower than that of an SSD. They are an ideal solution for storage that will not be frequently accessed, such as backups or media. Meanwhile an SSD is better suited for activities that require high-speed access to data, such as gaming.
A Solid-State Drive, or SSD, uses non-volatile flash memory to store your data. They function similarly to your PC’s RAM but are non-volatile and can retain data when not powered. To store your data, the SSD controller encodes the information as multiple electrical charges which are kept on NAND flash memory cells. These cells can later be accessed by the controller to retrieve your data.
As there are no moving parts in an SSD, they offer exceptionally fast data transfer speeds. This makes them ideal for storing applications, such as your OS or games. Furthermore, they are not subject to issues caused by knocks and bumps, meaning there is less chance for data corruption to occur due to physical factors. An SSD is generally more expensive in terms of price to gigabyte of storage.
