Things To Consider Before Buying External Hard Disk: – Every desktop computer, laptop, and netbook contains a hard-disk drive. The hard-disk drive, better known as the hard drive, is one of the most vital components in a computer. The hard drive stores information for the computer in a non-volatile way, meaning that when the user shuts off the computer, all the information he saved will still be there when he turns the computer back on. Today, hard drives can store an enormous amount of information.

Shopping for an external hard drive can be confusing. You have a decision of buying one and at the same time, you are overwhelmed by a lot of hard drives available in the market. Don’t worry, because, in this guide, I will guide you through all the technical aspects of the external hard drive. I want to spend your time helping you decode the most important technical aspect when buying a new hard drive for your computer. So, if you have never bought an external hard drive or you are interested in it, I bet, by the end of this blog post you will know what you should be shopping for.

Owning an external hard drive is a good choice you will ever make. Trust me, you have a technology in your hand that has immense mobility and portability. And at the same time, it’ll perform a backup of your large quantity of data and information with far more speed at ease. And it’s always a good idea to back up your computer in some weeks or months. Reliable, Unlimited storage capacity, mobility, and a lot more merits to go, if you have it you’re gonna get it.

Alright! So let’s have a glance at the things to be considered before you buy an external hard disk.

Things To Consider Before Buying External Hard Disk

1. Safety First

You may have to carry more confidential pieces of information here and there. Encryption is where it comes for your safety. So, it’s your responsibility to make sure your external hard drive comes with hardware-based encryption, which is more trustworthy than software-based encryption. Carrying such highly sensitive files around put them into loss or theft or to more such dangers. So, you want your safety first rather than losing data and putting yourself into any kind of trouble, Right?

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2. Is it Compatible?

Do you possess Mac, Apple PC, or Another PC? It’s a critical thing to think about as there are hard drives that are compatible with one of the PC you have i.e. Either it is a PC or a Mac – but not both at the same time. However, there are ways to reformat the not-compatible external hard drives. But it’s good to get the supported one.

3. Selecting Your Connection Types

Choose your external hard drive carefully. As you are getting an external hard drive which got one of these two connection types. They are USB or Firewire. Talking about the Firewire is the fastest external hard drive type available in the tech market. And for your kind information, it has got fewer chances of support on most of the PC. No doubt, most PCs nowadays days support USB connection types.

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Don’t just stick to the USB connection types. Know a few more things about it. I mean, do you have a USB port that is USB 1.0, USB 2.0, or more than that? One with the computer having a USB 1.0 port is going to face the problem of very slow data transfer. The minimum requirement to solve this problem is having a USB 2.0 port on your machine. And yes this applies to both your computer as well as an external hard drive.

Though USB 3.0 is the fastest in terms of transferring files, eSATA is the next best thing, but tends to be expensive, too. There is also Thunderbolt, which is still gaining traction in the mainstream. Developed by Intel in a collaboration with Apple, Thunderbolt is extremely fast. In fact, with a throughput of 10Mbps, it’s the fastest out of all the ports. That being said, it also adds a hefty price to most Thunderbolt-capable external hard drives.

4. Which Brand to Hook Up With

While purchasing an external hard drive, try Hooking up with any of the brands that are popular or sound recognizable. Some brands like the name brand XYZ costs $80 for 100GB whereas Western Digital(WD) costs $200 for 100GB to you. It’s good to save money and choose the brand XYZ but have you ever thought that why WD products cost a lot more than brand XYZ? What’s the difference? Maybe you’re saying they love a customer like you, so they’re selling it cheap. Yeah! You’re right. And you know it’s a cheaper external hard drive made with inferior parts that are going to break a lot sooner than you might expect. Is saving a few dollars worth that risk?

Maxtor, Western Digital, and Iomega are all reliable companies and well-known for their external hard drives. If something goes wrong with your drive you can have it fixed as soon as possible. With brand XYZ, you’ll probably not even be able to find an email address where you can contact the parent company. So, think about it.

5. Just Fast or Fastest

Here we are now talking about the favorite thing in a hard drive. You guessed it right, Speed. There is no doubt that the faster your hard drive functions the faster data is going to get transferred to your machine and the same applies to the hard drive, too.

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Some information might help you to choose the right hard drive at the right speed. Watch out for a hard drive having a Seek Time of 10 milliseconds or less. The other thing you need is the Buffer Size. In this context the more the better you’re gonna get. Get a drive with at least a 4MB buffer. And the last thing is the RPM. A higher RPM is better. Please make 5400RPM a minimum requirement. You can prefer more than that. I recommend you choose one that comes with 7200RPM.

6. External solid-state drives

A note on external solid-state drives (SSDs): As SSDs are much, much pricier than their hard drive competition, they remain rather rare, and do not boast monster capacities. Most SSD external hard drives range between 64GB and 512 GB. Generally speaking, it’s better to have an SSD inside your computer than outside.

7. Ease your use and reliability

Choose a hard drive that comes with preinstalled and preconfigured utility software and other software. You will have a place to be reliable and it’ll just make your things that much easier. Similarly, they choose the one that has a warranty of a year at least. That is a plus point of trustworthiness to the product. And if it is more than that or you like it even with a year warranty you’re going to love it.

8. External Hard Drive or Portable Hard Drive

You need to know what an external hard drive and the portable hard drive are. An external hard drive is such a hard drive that requires an external power source, while on the other hand a portable hard drive can be powered just by your PC. Simply keep in mind that if your hard drive requires to be plugged into an AC power to be used, it’s an external hard drive. If it doesn’t, it’s a portable one. While an external hard drive keeps data safe in comparison to a portable one, the demerits are AC power of course.

9. Is Portability or Not

The purchase of a portable hard drive depends upon how you use your hard drive. If you are planning to keep it for use in the home only then having a heavy hard drive won’t bother you at all. But if that’s not what you want, then you’ll need to pay a little more from your wallet. Carrying your hard drive here and there has a high chance of dropping your drive. In this scenario, the drive might have a chance of shock and damage which in a powered heavy hard drive is less as you’ll be using it in the home, especially. And that may cause a loss of data and information on the lighter hard drive you’re carrying around. Avoid anything flimsy and look for drives featuring solid, durable materials like quality plastic or aluminum.

Desktop-style drives, although also technically portable, are designed to stay put and require a power adapter. If you’d rather have something thin and light that you can simply plug into your computer without an external power source, this isn’t the type of drive for you. Make sure to look for one with a built-in fan if you’re going to be using it frequently and for heavy file transfers. A built-in fan will help extend the life of the HDD.

10. Make use of Google

Have you heard about any of the external hard drives lately? Maybe from your friends, parents or others. You may have information such as storage capacity, brand name, model, performance, and many more alike. Try googling it. Search it on google.

See the reviews of the particular or more such external hard drives in google. Give time for it, and know which ones are better and worst of all. It’s better to have something than to have nothing at all. Thank me later, you will be glad that you have something that you are searching for.

11. How Much Storage Do You Need

There’s a saying, ”Cut your coat according to your cloth.” The same thing applies when you are paying for a new hard drive. But according to the software you use, memory or kind of pictures, videos, music, documents or files you put in your computer. Buy as much as you can afford. If 100GB is affordable for you then get it. If got money and need more storage then get it. External hard drives with a decent amount of space can start at under $70 and go upwards of $3,200.

The storage capacity of external HDDs can range from about 2GB to 4TB. The smart size for people looking to store videos would be 1TB or 2 TB.

So, A hard disk drive (HDD; also hard drive, hard disk, or disk drive) is a device for storing and retrieving digital information, primarily computer data. Hard drives are classified as non-volatile, random access, digital, magnetic, and data storage devices. Introduced by IBM in 1956, hard disk drives have decreased in cost and physical size over the years while dramatically increasing in capacity and speed. Hard disk drives have been the dominant device for secondary storage of data in general-purpose computers since the early 1960s. Hard drive advances in their recording capacity, cost, reliability, and speed have kept pace with the requirements for secondary storage.

There are still more things to be considered for buying an external hard drive. Talk with the tech specialist on the PC and Hard drives. Your Friends or other interested people might help you with it. Then, it is good to get one that fit your need and your PC.