Choosing an External Hard Drive: 5 Things You Must Know

Why do you need a backup? To store your vital information safely and securely, no matter if something happens to your computer or internet connection. This way, you can ensure your data is safe on an external hard drive, and you can use cloud storage as a secondary source.

It is a wise option to buy an external hard drive as a backup option for your computer as you can reserve your data efficiently. Do you know that you are no more limited to storing a few hundred megabytes or several gigabytes? Now you can look forward to storage capacities ranging into terabytes which will make your data far more portable in large quantities than before.

If you have never bought an external hard drive before, there could be some room for error. Don't worry! We have enlisted some points that you can include on your shopping list before you go and make that final purchase.

1) Buy a Branded External Hard Drive-

Do yourself and your sensitive data a favour by buying a branded external hard drive that you easily recognize. No doubt the branded ones can cost a little more as compared to the non-branded ones, but with computer accessories like these, you really get what you paid for.

If the most popular external hard drive G-technology drive recover of six terabytes costs £173 and some brand "x" costs six terabytes charge £100, why do you think there is the difference? Because they liked you? Or they are happy to make smaller profits? No! It is because the drive is made up of inferior and cheaper parts that will collapse sooner than you expected, maybe just with the variations in temperature.

Sticking with brands like G-technology ensures that the quality is not compromised. G-technology drive features an all-aluminum enclosure with an illuminated ‘G’ logo and air vents to cool the drive on the front. Besides, they always come with a warranty, so if anything goes wrong, you can have it fixed.

2) Check the Storage Capacity-

When buying an external hard drive, the most important specification to focus on is the storage space it provides. There is no fun of purchasing a high-speed device with encryption and remote access if it doesn't offer enough space to store your data.

Then, what is the best size? The storage capacity depends on your requirement. If you just want to transfer your documents, files, photos, etc. from one device to another or looking out to expand your storage space on your low-end laptop or tablet, then a mid-range flash drive would be an ideal choice. But, if you want to store larger files and documents for the long term, then you might need something bigger, and that could range between 1TB to 5TB.

3) Offers Connectivity-

When buying an external hard drive, check its connectivity. It will either support USB or Firewire. Firewire is the fastest option available, but the majority of computers will, however, feature a USB port. If your computer has a USB port, then find out its type- it could either be USB 1.0 or 2.0. If your PC has the former one, then the data transfer will be slow. Therefore, you should consider USB 2.0 as the option for both your computer and your external hard drive.

4) Focus on Speed -

The faster your hard drive operates, the quicker will it transfers data to your computer and vice-versa. Therefore, here are a couple of technical things you need to include in your checklist-

• The seek time needs to be of 10ms or less.
• Get a drive with at least 4MB buffer size.
• It must have higher RPM (Minimum- 5400 rpm)

5) High Security-

For those who take data security seriously and are involved with sensitive data, must know that encryption is a good idea. Many high-quality drives are compatible with software encryption solutions that serve the purpose. While some drives are embedded with casings to prevent physical tampering and others may have a physical security system like the pin-code input for extremely security-conscious people.