FireWire is a similar connection to USB, in that it is plug-and-play. Simply connect your device to the computer and it will usually be ready to be used within 30 seconds. FireWire is much more common in Mac computers than in Windows computers. USB 3.x is the current standard for USB speeds. It's much faster than USB 2.0, and thus recommended for devices like external hard drives. You can typically identify a USB 3.x port or connector by its blue coloring. Some USB 3.0 ports also have an SS symbol (which stands for Super Speed). Most new computers have at least one USB 3 port, and high-quality flash drives use this standard. SATA power cable connectors are the larger of the two, featuring 15-pins. Three pins within the connector work in parallel to supply different voltages (3.3V, 5V, and 12V). Some early versions also offer the dated four-pin Molex connector (the standard used with PATA cables) but most modern SATA power cables simply offer the newer 15-pin connector. The benefits of SATA power cables include increased current capacity and reduced electrical impedance. SATA Data Cable Connectors ATA is a very common connection for internal drives in older PCs and older desktop Macs (before G5), and for devices like CD and DVD drives in modern PCs and Macs. It is a connector about 2 inches (5 cm) wide and has 40 small gold pins that will fit into the corresponding 40 small holes on its corresponding connector. Serial ATA is the most common connection for internal drives in modern PCs and Macs. There can be multiple SATA ports on any one motherboard or controller card. One cable connects one hard drive to one port on the motherboard (as opposed to Parallel ATA).

Still, while external SSDs are cheaper than they were a few years ago (see the best we've tested at the preceding link), they're far from a complete replacement for spinning drives. Larger external drives designed to stay on your desk or in a server closet still almost exclusively use spinning-drive mechanisms, taking advantage of platter drives' much higher capacities and much lower prices compared with SSDs. USB 1.x was the original standard, and is ancient by modern benchmarks. You're very unlikely to find devices using this standard nowadays.Type-A: The standard flat, rectangular interface that you find on one end of nearly every USB cable. Most computers have multiple USB-A ports for connecting peripherals. You'll find them on game consoles, TVs, and other devices too. This cable only inserts in one way.

Research your EHD online to find out how big the drive is (2.5 inch or 3.5 inch) and the type of drive (usually SATA), so you can buy the correct enclosure. Plastic enclosures are cheap and mostly good enough. Metal enclosures with built-in fans are better for cooling a hard drive that is in constant use and making it last longer. Connect the SATA cable to the port on the hard drive, then connect the other end of the cable to the motherboard, taking care not to disturb or impede the connection to the existing HDD Sometimes taking out the hard drive and putting it into a new enclosure is the only way. Photograph: Alamy You'll only see the speed benefits of Thunderbolt, however, if you have a drive that's SSD-based, or a multi-drive, platter-based desktop DAS that is set up in a RAID array. For ordinary external hard drives, Thunderbolt is very much the exception, not the rule. It tends to show up mainly in products geared toward the Mac market. Some external hard drives draw their power from the USB port and they may not get enough. This can be a problem if the PC’s motherboard does not supply enough power to the USB port you are using or if the drive is plugged into a non-powered hub. EHDs that have their own power supplies tend to work more reliably.Most USB failures are glitches. Often, if a device is not recognised by one port, it will work when plugged into a different port or a different PC. If not, the traditional approach – basically, turning your PC off and on again – often works. It is also worth noting that SATA cables can be used to connect external hard drives to a PC via the e-SATA input. Likewise, it may be possible to connect an external hard drive to a computer using a SATA to USB adapter if the particular hard drive supports USB input. SATA Cables for Laptops

But with square corners and an antiquated, two-tone design, the drive isn’t a looker. And it finished near the bottom of all of our performance tests. Just how much faster is it to access data stored in flash cells? Typical read and write speeds for consumer drives with spinning platters are in the 100MBps to 200MBps range, depending on platter densities and whether they spin at 5,400rpm (more common) or 7,200rpm (less common). External SSDs offer at least twice that speed and now, often much more, with typical results on our benchmark tests in excess of 400MBps for the slowest ones. Practically speaking, this means you can move gigabytes of data (say, a 4GB feature-length film, or a year's worth of family photos) to an external SSD in seconds rather than the minutes it would take with an external spinning drive. Seagate products that have this connection are: FreeAgent XTreme, FreeAgent Pro (classic), and the Seagate eSATA drive. The USB 3.0 cable has two ends - one to connect into the drive, and one to connect into the computer. The connection into the drive is not the same as USB 2.0, but the connector into the computer is compatible with USB 2.0, while retaining its own special attributes. Sometimes these ports are found both on the front and the rear of your computer. Usually it is OK to connect the drive either to the front or to the rear, though if trouble occurs, it is best to connect it to the port on the rear. USB drives are just cheap hard drives in (usually) plastic enclosures. You can easily make your own by buying a big hard drive and a separate enclosure. If your EHD doesn’t work but you can hear the drive spin up when it is plugged in, you can try removing the hard drive and installing it in a new enclosure.

An ATA hard drive that is connected to the same cable as a CD or DVD drive must be connected to the master position, with the CD or DVD drive in the slave position. In addition to their physical shape differences, USB ports on the computer side will variously support USB 3.0, 3.1, or 3.2, depending on the age of the computer and how up to date its marketing materials are. You don't have to worry about the differences among these three USB specs when looking at ordinary hard drives, though. All are inter-compatible, and you won't see a speed bump from one versus the other in the hard drive world. The drive platters' own speed is the limiter, not the flavor of USB 3.