There are specialty external hard drives that you can get which have some unique features that you may want to consider when deciding on the best portable hard drive for your needs. For example, if you travel a lot or are generally pretty rough with your personal electronics, you may want to choose a portable hard drive that is built for ruggedness.

These rugged type hard drives usually have some kind of designation as such. They will say rugged, or will say something like 'military grade' or military spec. This typically means they have some kind of super durable casing. Some are designed to be submerged in water or withstand heavy drops or falls. This is great if you really need to protect your drive from damage or are in some kind of extreme environment.

Another feature to consider is that if you want to be able to use the external hard drive for a specific application. For instance, you may want to be able to use it with a mac as a backup using their time machine backup software, so make sure any portable hard drive you get is compatible with that featuere. Another example would be to use the external hard drive to expand the capacity of a particular dvr you may be using at home.

They even make wireless portable hard drives these days, so that any user on your network can easily access it without even having to connect it to your USB port! So just remember these things when shopping for your next portable hard drive.