#Ebolaxternl memory note 4 portable#

Because moving tens of terabytes of data over a network can take hours or days, customers place their data on an external storage device and then send the device to their chosen provider to copy locally. When moving large amounts of data to the cloud, providers will often use external storage devices in a practice known as cloud seeding. Storage area networks ( SANs) for block-level storage and network-attached storage ( NAS) devices for file-based storage are examples of external storage.Īnother common use case for an external storage device is to transport data between on-site and off-site computer systems. External storage offers HDD, all-flash and hybrid storage arrays for block-based, file-based or object storage, or a mix of these three protocols known as unified storage.

#Ebolaxternl memory note 4 portable#

It increases storage capacity without having to open up a system.Įxternal storage is often used to store information that's accessed less frequently by applications running on a desktop, laptop, server or mobile device, such as an Android or iOS smartphone or tablet.įor PCs, an external storage device often consists of stationary or portable hard disk drives ( HDDs), or solid-state drives ( SSDs) attached via a USB or FireWire connection, or wirelessly.įor enterprises, an external storage device can serve as primary storage connected to servers through Ethernet or Fibre Channel switches, or as secondary storage for backup and archiving purposes.

An external storage device can be removable or non-removable, temporary or permanent, and accessible over a wired or wireless network.Įxternal storage enables users to store data separately from a computer's main or primary storage and memory at a relatively low cost.

James Alan Miller, Senior Executive EditorĪn external storage device, also referred to as auxiliary storage and secondary storage, is a device that contains all the addressable data storage that is not inside a computer's main storage or memory.