With ever increasing amounts of information to store, an external hard drive is essential. But do you need another drive to back up those vital files?
There was a time when a 250GB external hard drive was considered to be extremely large and something of luxury. Nowadays the first 4TB drive is a reality from Western Digital and who knows how much bigger they will grow in the next few years.
One of the interesting conundrums this throws up is do I need an external hard drive to backup my external hard drive? When most of us buy an external drive it is to back up an internal computer hard drive and protect valuable data, be it photos, mp3s, movies or important work files. However if the external drive is so large that it holds everything on your internal disk as well as some additional files, in a sense you are back where you started requiring another backup as protection. Luckily with even 1TB drives being relatively cheap, it is probably good practice to have a second external desktop drive to copy to. Modern drives are relatively stable but as we all know, technology can fail us from time to time and it is better to be safe than sorry.
With such large volumes of data to move eSATA connections are now becoming more common because of the speed with which they can handle data. If your PC does not have an eSATA connection you can fit a card into the computer giving you the extra flexibility. The other alternative is a Firewire connection which is faster than the standard USB2 connection that the overwhelming majority of modern drives come equipped with. Having said that if you are not in a hurry to backup huge volumes then a USB2 transfer will do the job adequately and you can go off and perform other tasks while the process is running.
Portable external hard drives are now providing up to 500GB in capacity. If your current drive is of similar size or smaller you could simply copy over the contents and then keep the portable drive safely somewhere offsite. Portability can be very useful, particularly if you have data in different locations, for instance on another computer in a different room or in another building. With a portable drive you can just back up the important data on each computer or external hard drive selectively, and carry the drive with you wherever you may need it.
Whichever way you view it an external hard drive these days is vital for the home computer user. Whether your priority is extra capacity to store the likes of audio and video data files that consume more and more of your internal drive, or merely as backup protection I recommend you look for the best buy external hard drive now. It will allow peace of mind safe in the knowledge that you will not lose vital information.http://www.external-harddrives.com/
