Important points to consider before deciding on your external hard drive

Nov 5
10:02

2009

John765

John765

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Article about PC components and external hard drive.

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Computers are used in most places these days,Important points to consider before deciding on your external hard drive Articles be it at homes or at the office place. There is lot of data that needs to be stored. It is always advisable to have a backup of the data so that in case the computer crashes down due to certain viruses, you have a copy of your data. An external hard drive can go a long way in helping meet your requirements of external data storage. Before buying one, you can have a look at the following tips to decide the one you wish to go for.

1.)   There are branded external hard drives and there are local ones too. The local ones are cheaper than the branded ones. Though a branded hard drive is expensive, it is better to go for one as it comes with a warranty and is obviously made with superior parts in it. If you buy a local external hard drive, you do not receive any warranty for it and chances are high that it might be made with low-quality parts. As this is a long term investment, buying a branded one and spending few extra dollars will not pinch at all.

2.)   When you need to decide on the size of the external hard drive, see your storage requirements and double the figure keeping your future needs in mind. Also note that the price per GB is lesser as you go for higher storage capacity hard drives. If you are looking for a computer at home, then a 50GB size would suffice and if you want an external hard drive for a company, then it is advisable to go in for a 500 or 1000GB size drive. With storage requirements increasing by the day, very soon, we will be talking not in terms of GB (gigabytes) but in terms of TB (terabytes).

3.)   While deciding for the connector, eSATA and FireWire are faster than USB ports. eSATA works at a speed that is 6 times faster than FireWire. But, please note that most computer systems are equipped with USB ports. If your machine has USB 1.0 port, then your machine might work at a slow speed. You will need to get a USB 2.0 port card fitted to speed up things. If you are looking for an external hard drive for your personal desktop or laptop, then going for one with a USB connector is sufficient. However, if you are looking for a company with many computers operating and lot of data transfer from one machine to another, then it is better to go in for eSATA or FireWire connectors as they transfer data at a much faster speed.

4.)   Always do proper research on the Internet before buying a brand. Check out its price on different websites, the reviews posted and always buy from a reliable website.

5.)   It is obviously better to have an external hard drive that operates faster. Buy a hard drive with at least 4MB buffer size and one that operates above 5400rpm. These days, hard drives operating at around 7200rpm are gaining popularity as they work at a very fast speed.

Keep these above five points in mind before selecting the external hard drive and keep a backup of all your important data.

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