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A hard drive designed to be connected to a computer via an external interface such as USB, eSATA, Thunderbolt, or IEEE 1394.

External hard drives are removable or portable hard disks designed to be connected to a computer via an external interface such as USB, eSATA, Thunderbolt, or IEEE 1394 (FireWire). They have low cost per gigabyte and are commonly used for backups and transferring files between computers.

Hard drives in enclosures with network ports are considered network-attached storage devices; questions about these devices should be tagged .