The computer has become everyone's favorite filing cabinet. Most of the content people use for their everyday work and recreation are now stored in the computers internal hard drive, be it music, applications, movies, and documents and spreadsheets. But what happens when one day, your computer suddenly breaks down and refuses to turn on, and everything every single digital keepsake disappears? Imagine the heartbreak and frustration of knowing that you may never be able to recover them again!
Thankfully, with the birth of portable hard disks, there is now an easy and inexpensive way to back up and store your media. A portable hard drive offers a way for you to take your data along with you anywhere you go. It is perfect for those who are always on the go. There are many good portable hard drives in the market right now, and the great thing about them is that they are quite affordable. You can get a 2TB portable drive for a minimum price of about $80 to $100.
In buying a portable hard disk, the following things must be considered: size, cache size, and connection type. Hard drives are measured in terms of gigabytes (GB) and terabytes (TB). If the files you plan to back up are mostly small files like word-processing documents or e-mails, a portable hard drive as small as 20GB will do. However, heavy media users or those that are fond of collecting music, video or movie files, it is advisable to get more than 100GB to 2TB, depending on how much content you have or are still planning to have. Another consideration would be its speed. The cache size will determine the speed of transferring or copying files to the drive. A larger cache size would mean that the files will copy faster on the drive. Of course, drives with higher cache sizes are, to a large extent, more expensive. Lastly, it is also important to determine which connection type is best for you. There are three connection types, namely USB, Firewire, and eSATA. The USB is the most commonly used as all computers are furnished with USB ports. It is best Firewire is preferred by most MAC users since most MAC computers come with an integrated Firewire support. Firewire can copy files to the disk that the USB. eSATA is the fastest in terms of transferring files, so it is ideal for large files.
Having a portable hard drive is one of the wisest choices you will ever make in your life. Storing too many files in your computer will eventually slow it down so backing it up is a must. Also, saving all your files in a portable hard drive will prove to be helpful in case of a hard-drive crash. Portable hard drives will save you a lot of trouble later on. It is better to safeguard your precious memories and files you worked so hard on creating or obtaining than to lose them to a computer system crash.
The best portable hard drive will come with a range of connection options. Make sure you get one with a high enough storage capacity for your needs.
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