How to Know What External Storage is Right for You

An external hard drive can have many benefits for any computer, but with all the options on the market today, choosing the right one can be a daunting task.

Even an average computer user can benefit from the features that external hard drives provide today. One can be used to store photos from family gatherings, make sure music collections are safe and sound, or backup an internal hard drive just in case it crashes.

But, while it can provide many advantages, choosing one can be a tricky task for the average computer user. Before deciding on one to purchase, there are many important factors to consider including what storage needs are, what it is being used for, and whether or not it is really worth the money for a chosen model.

Who Needs an External Hard Drive?

An external hard drive is a must-have computer accessory in today's world and they are great for anyone who needs to expand their storage, backup their music and family photos, protect important files, or just ensure that if his hard drive crashes he can quickly restore his computer to a working state.

Files can easily becoming corrupted and hard drives becoming damaged are only a few of the things that can go wrong with computers and destroy files. With an external hard drive, protecting against all of these problems and more is easy to do.

How Does an External Hard Drive Work?

An external hard drive is one of the simplest computer peripherals to install. Most can be installed simply by plugging it into a USB port, and then it works like a regular internal hard drive. Many newer ones even come with user-friendly software that can be used to organize and backup files.

How Much does an External Hard Drive Store?

Today, external hard drives usually range in size from 320 gigabytes (GB) all the way up to and beyond 4 terabytes (TB). If all you want to do is simply store photos, music, videos, etc. a 320GB hard drive may meet the storage needs with room to spare. However, a larger hard drive many be necessary for certain things such as backing up an internal hard drive.

Everyone's space requirements may be different, but it is simple to figure how much space someone is going to need. For example, if someone wants to backup his family's photos, 320GB will be more than enough. One 8 megapixel photo is about 1 megabyte in size on average. That means that, since there are 1000 megabytes in 1 gigabyte, he would be able to store close to 320,000 photos, a number much larger than the average photo collection.

Figuring out how much storage needed is simple. Just look at the size of all the files to be stored (i.e. the Documents folder, the Pictures folder, the C:\ drive) and buy an external hard drive that suits those storage needs. To ensure that the external hard drive is good for years to come, choose a large hard drive (between 500GB and 2TB) and that will certainly make sure that it is future-proofed.

How Much does an External Hard Drive Cost?

The price of external hard drives can vary greatly from manufacturer to manufacturer and from store to store. Western Digital's My Book Home Edition costs $109, while Seagate's FreeAgent's Desk costs $299.99 for 2TB (these prices are taken from the manufacturer's websites).

When pricing external hard drive, be sure to shop around at different places. Consider shopping online, as this can lead to some great discounts. For example, one price in a Best Buy store for an external hard drive might be much cheaper online on a site like TigerDirect.

The best way to find out if you are getting your money's worth is to figure out the price per gigabyte. To find this, simply divide the price of the hard drive by the number of gigabytes it stores (keeping in mind that 1 terabyte stores about 1000 gigabytes). This is a great way to decide which external hard drive is the best value.

How to hook up an External Hard Drive?

External hard drives typically come with one of three kinds of connectors. The most common being USB 2.0 with the other 2 connectors, eSATA and Fire Wire. While USB Connectors are the most common and are virtually on every newer PC, they may not be the best choice.

eSATA provides much more speed and performance over USB, as does FireWire. When choosing an external hard drive, be sure to choose the best one available. If you have an eSATA or FireWire port on your computer, go for it! You will surely notice a performance boost over USB 2.0.

How to Choose an External Hard Dive?

When deciding on which hard drive to choose, be sure to take into account all of the options. Decide how much storage space is needed and what it is needed for. Then, once that is decided, choose the hard drive that is the best value. By looking at all of the options, anyone can surely get the hard drive that he needs!

This article from Dreamyoup