People are storing everything on their computers now. You name it - music, videos, pictures, documents and programs. All of this data quicky adds up to quite a bit. The more data you store on your operating system drive the slower your computer will run. Once the operating system drive is full your PC will stop working, and that's a fact!
The solution to this problem problem is adding on a hard drive which can give you the critical free space your computer needs. The install process is simple, plugin the hard drives USB cable to a free USB port on your computer and you're ready to go. Windows will automatically install the hard drive and give it a drive letter. Now, you're free to move all that data clogging up your operating system disk to the external hard drive.
Another reason for using an portable hard drive is for backing up data. Instead of having all your files on one hard drive that can fail at any moment you can copy your critical data to the external hard drive. Now you have your data in two places - the main hard drive and the external hard drive. All you have to do is remember to backup your data, and that of course is the hardest part!
What Kind Of External Hard Drive Should You Get?
Size: First, you need to decide how big of a drive you need. Typlical sizes at the time of this writing would be:
250 GB
500 GB
1 TB
2 TB
I typically advise my clients to go for the 500 GB or the 1 TB. This usually offers enough space to sufficiently backup nearly everything on your PC. The only time you need more space would be for lots of videos.
Powered Drives: Powered USB hard drives offer lots of speed and larger compassities but require an ac power adapter.
Non-Powered Drives: These drives do not require an external power source however they are pretty slow and usually small (about 250 GB). Non-Powered drives are usually ok to store files on, but you wouldn't want to do any data intensive work on them.
Drive speeds: Typical drive speeds are 7200 rpm and 5400 rpm. Some external hard drives actually offer a 10,000 rpm drive, however they are pretty expensive. The higher the number of rpm's the faster you can access the data on your hard drive.
Connections and Connection Speeds.
Most external hard drives usually have USB 2.0 and 1.1
USB 2.0 Speed = 480 MB/sec
Some of the more expensive drives have connections for firewire and eSata.
Firewire 400 = 400 MB/sec. Contrary to popular belief firewire 400 can be up to 70% faster than USB 2.0.
Firewire 800 = 800 MB/sec
eSata 1.5 = 1.5 Gigabits Per Sec
eSata 3.0 = 3.0 Gigabits Per Sec
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