Five Important Tips For Buying An External Hard Drive.

You will no longer be limited to storing a few hundred megabytes or even several gigabytes

. Nope. Now you can look forward to portable and reliable storage capacities ranging into terabytes. That frustrating desktop computer or network file server backup job just got a whole lot easier.

If you have never bought an external hard disk before then there is a few pointers here that may help to have on your shopping list before you go and make that final purchase.

1. Buy A Brand

Do yourself a huge favor and buy a brand name that you easily recognize. Sure these may cost a little more than brand x but with computer accessories like this you really do get what you pay for. If a Maxtor 100GB external drive costs 200 and another brand x 100GB drive costs Dollar 80 why do you think that is. Because the company likes you Because they like making smaller profits. No its because its a cheaper drive made with inferior parts that's going to break a lot sooner than you might expect.

The other aspect of sticking with a brand is your warranty. For example Maxtor, Western Digital and Iomega are all reliable companies and well known for their external hard disks. If something goes wrong with your drive you can have it fixed. With brand x you will probably not even be able to find an email address that you can contact the parent company on. Is saving a few dollars worth that risk.

2. Google It

What ever brand or model you decide on make sure you do some research before purchasing. Always, always Google the exact brand and model of the drive you are considering buying. Look for reviews and especially any feedback on how reliable a drive is. You will be very surprised to find that some companies have particularly bad reputations in terms of equipment reliability and what is known as the click of death in the external hard drive industry.

Spend time in Google checking out your prospective purchase. You will be glad that you did.

3. Connectivity

When it comes to external hard drives you will need to choose carefully when selecting your connection types. Your external hard drive will support either USB or Firewire. Firewire is the fastest option available at the moment but your computer may not support this. The vast majority of modern computers will, however, feature a USB port.

The next question now is what type of USB port do you have USB 1.0 or 2.0 If your computer only has a USB 1.0 port then your external hard drive is going to transfer data VERY slowly. USB 2.0 is the minimum you should consider as connection options for both your computer and your external hard drive. If you don't have a USB 2.0 port also called HiSpeed USB on your computer you may need to get a USB 2.0 card fitted.

4. Speed

Now of course we need to talk about speed. The faster your hard drive operates the faster data will get transferred to your computer and vice versa. Without boggling you with comptuer jargon there as a couple of technical things you need to include on your shopping list.

Seek time this needs to be 10ms milliseconds or less

Buffer size more is better. Get a drive with at least a 4MB buffer.

RPM higher is better. 5400rpm as a minimum. 7200rpm being preferred.

Stick to the above basic pointers and you will do just fine.

5. Size

This is the simple part of the whole buying an external hard drive equation. Buy as much as you can afford. If you can afford 100GB then get it. However if you can afford 200GB then get it. Then again if you scraped together a few dollars more you could afford 300GB then do it.

This is not a sales pitch. Far from it. There is simply no such thing as having too much data storage space. The 160GB drive that I have here was filled up in a little under a month. Currently a terabye option sounds good for my future needs.

Always add 50 to your data storage requirements. Honestly. You will thanks yourself within the first 90 days of buying your external drive.

Hopefully now you will be better prepared for purchasing your new external hard drive. It is one of the best purchases you will ever make.

by: rajneeshchandna

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