The Benefits of an External Hard Drive

As the number of digital files we create increases exponentially we need to store these files in a secure and cost effective manner. External hard drives are a perfect solution and this article considers the benefits of owning one.

Our lives today are digital. Our photos, our videos, our documents, certificates and communications are a collection of zeros and ones. In the past we may have needed a filling cabinet or a set of drawers to store all our personal data. Now we need hard drives to keep our stuff.

As we amass more and more digital data, we need more and more hard drive space. Hard drives are cheap these days, but a desktop computer or laptop comes with a limited amount of storage. We are now collecting bigger and bigger files as all our entertainment, including movies and music, turn digital. Eventually we will run out of space and will need to invest in an external hard drive.

Hard Drives get Bigger and Cheaper

Back in the heady days of the 90s, when personal computers were first making serious inroads into our lives, hard drive storage space was relatively expensive.  The world’s first gigabyte-capacity disk drive,  introduced by IBM in 1980, was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (about 250 kg), and had a price tag of $40,000! Even the first ROM disks (writable DVDs) cost over $30 each for a storage of 4.5 GB.

With the early personal computers a 20Mb disk was considered large. Now in 2010, most desktop hard drives have a capacity of 500 to 1000 gigabytes (a terabyte). The laptop I am typing this article on has an internal hard drive of 500 Gb.

Basic Benefits of an External Drive

1. They are great for backing up your data in case your main internal hard drive fails
2. They are small and portable and can be easily moved from computer to computer
3. They will extend the storage capacity of a desktop or laptop
4. Some external drives have inbuilt encryption and allow you to lock your sensitive data away from prying eyes. They can, of course, also be stored in safes or other secure places.
5. Your entire operating systems can be stored on external hard drives which can be used as boot-up devices to restore an operating system on a PC in case of any malfunction or serious security issues.
6. They are getting cheaper and larger every month!
7. USB is pretty much the standard connection protocol now, so hard drives can be connected easily to almost any computer.

Some Points to Consider about your External Drive

It’s a fact of life that hard drives fail and this probably applies more to external drives than to internal ones.  Unlike the internal drive in your PC  external drives are often carried around. Some are designed to be portable so, if you intend moving your drive from place to place, make sure you chose a model that is designed for this purpose. Unlike your internal drive they are more exposed to damage, easily knocked off desks, can have hot liquids spilled on them and are generally more vulnerable to damage.

Bearing this in mind you should treat your external HD as a precious and delicate object and make sure it is secure and protected when you carry it around. When positioned on your desk make sure it is in a secure place with no trailing wires or leads.

Always back up your data onto at least two drives. There is an old adage in computer science. If data does not exist in three different places it may as well not exist at all! So keep your files on your internal drive, copy then to your external drive and keep a third copy, either on another external drive, or media such as CDs or DVDs.

When choosing an external HD don’t assume that biggest is best. Perhaps a better quality, smaller capacity would still be more than big enough, and would allow you to buy two of the devices for back-up, rather than one monster drive, which, if it fails, will consign all your precious files to the digital dustbin!

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