Question about external hard drives?

I am considering buying an external hard drive, 1 TB, but I'm not very familiar with the technology. It seems that some of them are as regular USB devices can be connected when the computer is turned on / off, and the data can be accessed. And then, when no longer needed, it can be removed like any other USB device. Other external hard drives seem to be nothing more than a hard drive that is out of If the USB interface. I'm confused? There are also portable hard drives, removable hard drive, along with external hard drives. What is the difference between them? I need an external hard drive, which is like a large capacity USB flash drive to store movies and media, as well as the transfer of that two different operating systems, one in Vista 64-bit and one 32-bit Windows XP. What is best for me?

laptop and external are the same thing, removable can mean an internal slides out easily, but mostliekly average exteranal too. Most plug in via USB or FireWire. Some power requier exturnal (Otlet a) the work while the other only has 2 USB plugs. always use the safe remove icon from hard drives can cah and uu jus plug tpullthe can lose data

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