Gareth Newfawn

External USB Hard Drive: The Necessities

If you are like me, all of the lists of features displayed right next to the slew of external usb hard drive systems causes nothing but confusion. Read more...

No matter how hard I tried, I was never really able to keep up with the consistent advances in technology, as they seem to make new updates all the time. It wasn’t until I stiffened my resolve and started spending time online researching external hard drive systems that I started to fully understand what features do what, and, more importantly, which features are a must have within any external hard drive!

The main and most obvious feature is the USB connection port. This port allows users to connect their external hard drive to their home computers, allowing them to gain access in order to transfer files. That, of course, is a given, but what I didn’t understand at first was the vast importance placed on the USB 2.0 connection interface! Through this interface, you are able to not only gain access to the many files saved on the drive, but it also powers the system through connecting to your home computer. After I unplugged my previous hard drive and replaced it with my newer external usb hard drive, I was amazed on how much energy the older model sucked out of my wallet once a month. After only a few months time, I was able to save more money by powering my external hard drive through the interface than I was ever able to save by simply plugging my older model into the wall.

This brings us to yet another necessary feature: Energy Star. Energy Star is a certain technology that allows your external hard drive to be powered through your computer, while, at the same time, acknowledging whether or not it is being accessed after a few minutes or so, causing it to automatically shift to sleep mode, saving energy. This also impacted my energy bill, though in small increments, in a very noticeable fashion. At this point, my new external usb hard drive was slowly paying for itself, especially when it was compared to the extra power that was being sucked out of my wallet during the year or so of using the older external drive model.

Another great feature that has come to be extremely necessary for me lately has been the EMC / HD connection software. This software enables such a smooth connection between the external usb hard drive and my home computer, that the time it takes to transfer files was literally cut in half! Saving time is saving money for me! Having said that, EMC / HD software isn’t the easiest to learn how to use, however, that is where your external usb hard drive comes in! After I started to realize what my external usb hard drive could really do, my experience with it was greatly increased, as I was more able to tap into almost all of the features that were forever under my nose!

Article Tags: External Hard Drive, External Hard, Hard Drive

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