| External hard drives have been around for some time. When they first came to be, they were big clunky things that allowed just a few gigabytes (a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes) of storage. Today however, one can find external drives that hold up to 2 terabytes (a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes) of storage capacity. The good new is, unlike a few years ago, you don't need a u-haul to get it home from the store. They've become lighter and more compact with age. There are basically two types of external hard drives (we'll discuss thumb drives in a bit). The first type is the desktop model that hooks up to your computer through a usb port and has to be plugged in. These units can hold the most data. There is also an ethernet model available that can be connected directly to a wired network or a wireless router. With these units, you can access the drive from your laptop when on a business trip or sitting in a Starbucks. I personally prefer the usb connected drives for downloading files, but I don't get away that often. For someone who travels frequently, the ethernet drive might be a better choice. Another type of external drive is the portable drive. They don't have the storage capacity of the desktops (250 GB is the limit as of this writing) but they are significantly smaller and hook right up to your computer's usb 2.0 port as its only power supply. These are my personal favorites. The 250 GB model can hold thosands of MP3 audio files, or a few movies, or tons of pictures. When I go on vacation, my laptop and external hard drive always come with me. I have external speakers for my laptop (they're cheap) and can listen to my MP3s, on the hard drive, for hours at a time in the hotel room. Actually, I don't spend that much time awake in a hotel room, but, hey, you could. The other, probably more important, use for the external drive is to back up data and free up space on your internal hard drive. If you've ever lost data from your internal hard drive, as I have recently, you know how frustrating it can be. I would think that, short of working for The Library of Congress, you could back up almost anything on those large capacity external drives, maybe even The Library of Congress too. Backing up is simple. Once the drive is connected and recognized by your computer, simply start transferring data onto the new drive. I usually just move it over using the mouse. Now it's stored and safe. Of course you could also use a cd-r or dvd-r (+ or -) and accompish the same goal. But bear in mind that the storage capacity is limited ih those formats (700 MB for cds, 4.7 GB for dvds). Speaking of limited capacity, let's talk about flash (or thumb) drives. They are those drives that are about the size of cigarette lighters. As with the aforementioned drives, the storage capacity keeps going up as the price keeps going down. As of this writing the capacity limit is 4 gigabytes. Flash drives are commonly used for transferring data from one computer to another. They are easy to carry because of their size, but also easy to lose for the same reason. Some people attach them to their keychains or wear them around their neck as a type of geek jewelry. If you do a lot of data transfers involving smaller files, then by all means get a flash drive if you don't already have one. As with all the drives mentioned above, look around for your best deals on a dependable drive. My personal favorite is Western Digital for external drives and SanDisk for flash drives. If you keep waiting for the price to go down you'll never buy one, because the price will always keep going down. What you paid a hundred dollars for this year will be fifty dollars next year, and twenty five dollars the year after that. You'll go crazy if you keep thinking about it. Just buy the darn thing, then tell your friends that if you had only waited a month, you could have had it for 20 dollars less. |
EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES
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