500GB External Hard Disk Drives

Store Even More with a 500GB External Hard Drive

Laptop and desktop computers come with only a limited amount of built-in storage. With a 500GB external hard drive, you can complement your existing hard drive's capacity and expand your storage limit. If you're looking for more room to store your files, an external hard drive is a convenient solution since upgrading internal storage isn't always an option. eBay offers a wide variety of external hard drives from many leading computer accessory manufacturers.

Yes, they are. On eBay, you can easily find a 500GB external hard drive for Mac and Windows computers. If you own a Mac, finding compatible accessories can often be difficult, but external hard drives can be formatted to work with just about any operating system. Here are some of the formats that a portable 500GB external hard drive can be configured to:

• NTFS: The NT file system format can only be used to read and write on Windows PCs.
• FAT32 and exFAT: The File Allocation Table format can be used on both Windows and Mac computers.
• Hierarchical File System: Also referred to as Mac OS Extended, this format is capable of reading and writing on Mac operating systems.

Portable external hard drives can come with different types of USB connectors, including USB 1.0, USB 2.0, and USB 3.0. Some models may even feature USB 3.1 adaptors. With USB types, the higher the version number, the faster the speed. Most new computers feature inputs for both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, so you'll find many 500GB hard drives available with these types of USB inputs. USB 3.0 is also backwards compatible, which means they can be also be used with USB 2.0 inputs. USB 1.0 is a dated version found on some older PCs, but you can still find many external drives available with this type of connector on eBay. The USB type signals the speed of communication, so it's important to consider the type of USB connector you'll want as it will impact the overall performance of your device.

An external hard disk drive is much more affordable than an SSD or solid state drive. Although a portable external SSD drive is faster than an HDD drive, they'll both hold the exact same amount of storage as they're designed to do in the end. If you're just looking for 500GB of extra storage for your computer, an external HDD hard disk drive will offer you just that at a fraction of the price of an SSD.