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External. A drive designed to be connected as an external device. Such drives have a USB or eSATA interface (see "Connection") and are designed for frequent connection and disconnection. They are useful for laptops that do not have their own built-in drive, and for desktop PCs if there is no room in the case for installing an additional drive, or it needs to be connected to different computers.
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External slim. The compact version of the external drive (see above) — these models have a much thinner thickness, which makes them especially convenient when transporting, for example, in a laptop bag.
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Internal. Drives designed for installation in desktop PC cases, in 5.25" slots. They are installed as a permanently functioning part of the system and do not require frequent reconnection. The connection is made via the IDE or SATA interface (see "Connection").
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Internal slim. A kind of internal drives (see above), designed for installation in laptops, where full-sized internal drives simply do not fit due to size. They differ in more compact dimensions (first of all, in thickness) and in the loading mechanism (for more details, see "Disk loading mechanism").
Possibility of operation of the drive with
two-layer DVD-discs(see "DVD±R"). The use of two layers for recording information doubles the capacity of the disc, but such media is only compatible with special drives.
