Portable External Hard Drives

By Phillip L. Burnsen

An external drive serves the same purpose as an internal drive, with the added functionality of portability. External drives are usually connected through an external port on your P.C or PC. Usually this implies a USB port and cable. For the sake of disk speed, you would like to take a look at drives that employ a USB 2.0 data connection. Most new computers and portables will have 2.0 USB connections.

Likely the biggest reason folk use an external hard drive, is for backup purposes. Although it's starting to change, as many are finding that external drives are superb for portability. A portable drive, means you can cart around all of your music, photographs and pictures where ever you go.

I really like to save cash, but you really do not want to buy a generic drive. First of all, they are of inferior quality unless you set one up yourself with a store-bought hard drive, as the common firms actually don't have the capacity to provide prime quality information products. The measurements and equipment needed to make good drives is simply too exclusive right now. They'll frequently omit info backup programs, too, making them unsuited for the use of backup.

Your external hard drive should be around the size of your desktop or laptop's hard drive if you employ it for data backup. Even if you only want to back up key files, trust me, you may eventually find use for the additional space, and it's truly not that much of a per-gigabyte markup in today's PC hardware market. Research prices for major brand drives using web sites like Google Shopping, which will enable you to find out how small you will have to pay for a 200GB backup drive versus a sixty or 80GB unit.

You shouldn't get a used drive. Hard drive life is mostly rated around 7 years, but this is reduced greatly when you buy used drives, as you aren't sure whether the prior owner ran it in a too-hot or physically violent environment, and the amount of money you will pay to get a new drive versus an old drive isn't that much considering the improved reliability of new backup external disc drives. Do you've got any other tips for selecting an external drive for information backup? Post in our comments section below. - 33374

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