What To Consider When Buying An External Hard Drive
There are many ways to back up data. You can backup to a network, on a remote file server, to tape or optical disks to name a few. However, these methods are usually expensive, are not scalable and designed for larger needs as in a corporate environment.
When you think about it losing data is everyone’s concern, not just corporations. We all have data we want to keep safe for financial, sentimental or professional reasons. We can easily run out of space on our hard drives with the advent of digital media. A good digital camera can produce files up to 1GB in size each. Obviously a corporate solution is overkill for you, however, an external hard drive is ideal.
Buying an external hard drive can be done as separate components or a kit. A kit consists of an enclosure and a drive. The drive is usually two and a half inches to three and a half inches in depth and is held in an enclosure. The enclosure can provide power source, cooling, connectivity to the computer and protection.
Your external hard drive will usually connect to your computer using what is called a “hot-pluggable’ USB 2.0 port. This means that as soon as you plug in the cable from the external hard drive, your computer will begin a “plug and play” dialogue leading you through an effortless install.
The durability of an external hard drive will vary considerably on the basis of quality of the media and the enclosure. Many have been known to fail. It is advisable to purchase a robust system, perhaps of RAID quality to begin, to ensure your data is safe and will be protected. RAID stands for redundant array of inexpensive drives.
Some manufacturers know for quality include LaCie (of their high end systems), Western Digital, Seagate and Maxtor.
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