Internal Hard Drive and External Hard Drive are storage devices used in computer systems. A hard drive is the term used for the physical device that is a part of every computer used to store data. This hard drive is essential for every computer system to house the operating system, program files and the data that is required by the user. Every computer comes fitted with an internal hard drive which comes in different capacities ranging from GB (gigabytes) to TB (Terabytes). Normally, this device is internal but there is an option and liberty for the user to use additional storage devices that have come to be known as external hard drives.
Normally if the computer has enough storage space, there is no need for an external hard drive but because of threats from the internet to the data, many people have started using these external hard drives. External hard drives also give the liberty to carry data from one place to another and to allow for sharing of data from one computer to another thus becoming very popular. Many members of a family use the same computer system posing threat of corruption to data inadvertently. Above all, the advent of HD video files has meant that people like to keep large amount of video data in their systems necessitating external hard drive.
External hard drives are similar to internal hard drives and can be considered a peripheral device that can be kept next to the computer and connected to the computer via a chord to allow for sharing of data. But there are also portable external hard drives that are of smaller capacities such as pen drives and iPods that are mostly used for carriage of data rather than the primary purpose of storage of data.
External hard drives not allow additional storage space; they also allow the user to back up important data and programs so that they are there in the event of any crash of the system or hard drive becoming corrupt. In such a scenario, the user can have all the important data and information stored in his external hard drive. You can keep all the sensitive information on your hard drive safely as a backup copy in the external hard drive. It is possible to turn off this external hard drive to protect it from any potential threats from internet.