Using an External Hard Drive

External hard drives are the perfect medium to store your backup data. For those of you who still do not backup your computer data click here to see my article on why you should.

For the rest of you who have come to your senses and realize just how important a regular backup of your data really is, I congratulate you.

An external hard drive is a hard disk drive which resides outside (external) of your computer case and connects to your PC through a USB, Firewire, or eSATA cable. The external hard drive provides an excellent solution for people who want to backup their computer files, photos, and music. Most are easy to use and installation is just a matter of plugging a cable into your desktop PC. An external hard drive can also provide you with much more available disk space if you happen to fill up your internal hard drive.

So how do I choose which one is best for me?

As you might expect, there are many brands and models to choose from. Some of the more well known brands are Western Digital, LaCie, Maxtor, Seagate, and Iomega. They all offer choices that differ primarily by storage capacity and speed.

Let's begin with storage capacity. How large a drive should you get? External drive capacity is typically listed in Gigabytes (a Gigabyte is a billion bytes or a thousand megabytes, which is about 1½ CDROM discs).

When selecting an external hard drive, you should decide what you will be using the drive for, and about how much data you will be placing on the drive. An easy way to get a ballpark number of how large your current data folder is would be to, for example, create a folder for your photos. You would then cut and paste all of your photos into this folder. Now, to determine how large this folder is, simply right-click on the folder with your mouse and choose Properties from the resulting menu. The General tab of the Properties window will then tell you how large the folder is. Do this again for your music and other files and then add up all the folder sizes to get the total size. Once you have a final total, multiply that number by 3. That will give you an estimate of the minimum size that your external drive should be. For example, say your folders add up to about 50 Gigabytes (50GB) of data. Multiplying 50 X 3 would equal 150GB. This would be your minimum size external drive. You always want to allow room for future storage needs. If you can afford a larger drive, get it. You won't be sorry.

Connection Types

The three most widely used types of removable hard disk interfaces are - USB, Firewire, and eSATA. An interface is just computer lingo meaning the type of connection.

With the advent of USB, the most common standard, external hard drives have become widely available and relatively inexpensive. Desktop models usually require a power source whereas most of the portable models get their power from the USB port. Currently, USB 2.0 speed is about 480 megabits per second. However, USB transfer rates are greatly affected by other devices and applications that are running at the same time as your file transfer, diminishing performance. USB 3.0 products are expected to arrive in 2009 or 2010. USB 3.0 is expected to be 10 times faster than USB 2.0, up to 4.8 gigabits per second. The main advantages of USB up to this point has been ease of use and relative low cost.

Conversely, Firewire is more like a direct connection to the external disk drive, and will copy files much quicker than USB. Firewire is Apple Inc.'s name for the IEEE 1394 High Speed Serial Bus. It is preferred over the more common USB for its greater effective speed and power distribution capabilities, and because it does not need a computer host. The current Firewire 800 (nearly 800 Megabits/sec transfer rates) is soon to be replaced by S1600 and S3200 — which enable data transmission rates up to 1.6 Gigabits/sec and 3.2 Gigabits/sec respectively. That would make Firewire theoretically four times faster than is currently possible.

eSATA which stands for "external" Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, communicate over a high-speed serial cable. This is a relatively new option for external drives since USB 2.0 and Firewire connected drives have been around for some time now. The main advantage of the eSATA technology is speed, some 4-6 times faster than existing USB 2.0 and Firewire transfer speeds. You'll soon be seeing more and more products offering eSATA as an option. Most external hard drives will soon be capable of all three interfaces- but some are only capable of either USB or Firewire. Something to keep in mind when you are selecting an external hard drive.

So how do I decide?

All three technologies will get the job done. Your decision will likely come down to cost and ease of use. If you are on a limited budget, USB will likely be the best choice, whereas if speed is what is important to you, and you are willing to pay for it, Firewire or eSATA will work best.

Whatever you choose, backing up your computer files is now easier than ever. There is really no excuse now, so do it!

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