5 Tips For Buying An External Hard Drive

So you've finally decided to buy an external hard drive as a backup option for your computer. This is a great choice for you because you're making backing up your data faster and easier than you could ever have imagined. You're also making your data far more portable in larger quantities than before.

You'll no longer be limited to storing a few hundred megabytes or even several gigabytes. Nope. Now you can look forward to portable and reliable storage capacities ranging into terabytes. That frustrating desktop computer or network file server backup job just got a whole lot easier.

If you've never bought an external hard disk before then there's a few pointers here that may help to have on your shopping list before you go and make that final purchase.

1. Buy A Brand

Do yourself a huge favor and buy a brand name that you easily recognize. Sure these may cost a little more than brand x but with computer accessories like this you really do get what you pay for. If a Western Digital 100GB external drive costs $200 and another brand x 100GB drive costs $80 why do you think that is? Because the company likes you? Because they like making smaller profits? No it's because it's a cheaper drive made with inferior parts that's going to break a lot sooner than you might expect.

The other aspect of sticking with a brand is your warranty. For example Maxtor, Western Digital and Iomega are all reliable companies and well known for their external hard disks. If something goes wrong with your drive you can have it fixed. With brand x you'll probably not even be able to find an email address that you can contact the parent company on. Is saving a few dollars worth that risk?

2. Google It

Whatever brand or model you decide on make sure you do some research before purchasing. Always, always Google the exact brand and model of the drive you're considering buying. Look for reviews and especially any feedback on how reliable a drive is. You'll be very surprised to find that some companies have particularly bad reputations in terms of equipment reliability and what's known as the "click of death" in the external hard drive industry.

Spend time in Google checking out your prospective purchase. You'll be glad that you did.

3. Connectivity

When it comes to external hard drives you'll need to choose carefully when selecting your connection types. Your external hard drive will support either USB or Firewire. Firewire is the fastest option available at the moment but your computer may not support this. The vast majority of modern computers will, however, feature a USB port.

The next question now is what type of USB port do you have - USB 1.0 or 2.0? If your computer only has a USB 1.0 port then your external hard drive is going to transfer data VERY slowly. USB 2.0 is the minimum you should consider as connection options for both your computer and your external hard drive. If you don't have a USB 2.0 port (also called HiSpeed USB) on your computer you may need to get a USB 2.0 card fitted.

4. Speed

Now of course we need to talk about speed. The faster your hard drive operates the faster data will get transferred to your computer and vice versa. Without boggling you with comptuer jargon there's a couple of technical things you need to include on your shopping list.

Seek time - this needs to be 10ms (milliseconds) or less

Buffer size - more is better. Get a drive with at least a 4MB buffer.

RPM - higher is better. 5400rpm as a minimum. 7200rpm being preferred.

Stick to the above basic pointers and you'll do just fine.

5. Size

This is the simple part of the whole "buying an external hard drive" equation. Buy as much as you can afford. If you can afford 100GB then get it. However if you can afford 200GB then get it. Then again if you scraped together a few dollars more you could afford 300GB then do it.

This isn't a sales pitch. Far from it. There is simply no such thing as having too much data storage space. The 160GB drive that I have here was filled up in a little under a month. Currently a terabye option sounds good for my future needs.

Always add 50% to your data storage requirements. Honestly. You'll thanks yourself within the first 90 days of buying your external drive.

Hopefully now you'll be better prepared for purchasing your new external hard drive. It's one of the best purchases you'll ever make.

Looking for the best external hard drive? Visit BackupAdvice.com for more information on your options. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Niall_Roche

USB External Hard Drives - Save Your Important Data

If you have ever owned a computer, you probably know that they are not completely reliable. Now, wouldn't it be nice to have a copy of everything on your computer just in case something happens? Well, you pretty much get this with USB external hard drives.

To begin with, a USB port is the port on one's computer that is perfectly rectangular in shape. It is next to the symbol that looks sort of like a sideways trident or tree. USB ports have many uses, as many electronics today use cords that attach to USB ports. To meet the need, many computers come with several ports.
A hard drive is the place on a computer where all the information is stored. It includes files, programs, and settings. It stores the information permanently, but if something happens to the computer the information is lost. Thus, it is good to have a back up.

A USB external hard drive is a hard drive that is, well, external to the computer. You back up all of your computer's information onto the drive. This means that if something happens to your computer or your computer's hard drive, you can still access your important information when you hook it up to another computer.

Computers can break down in so many ways, destroying valuable files. The computer may "decide" to freeze or shut down suddenly, which can completely throw the work that you were doing off kilter. If you do not save early and often, you may end up losing files that you were working on.

A similar thing can happen to all of the files on one's computer. A computer hard drive may stop working completely, which can destroy all files that were not backed up. A computer itself may completely break down, making it impossible to get to important files. A USB external hard drive can solve all of these problems.

This technology combines the convenience of utilizing a USB port with the convenience of an external hard drive. Because you can store all of your information on this machine, you can feel more secure when you are using your computer.

The USB drive can be stored in a secure place, such as a fireproof safe or in a storage place other than your home. It is important to keep it someplace secure, because this will reduce the chances of your information being lost. For instance, if someone's computer is destroyed because of a natural disaster such as a tornado or fire, it is possible that the external drive is destroyed as well. Of course, it is also possible that the computer hard drive will stop working for a completely different reason. However, it is good to be prepared, so storing the computer and the external drive in two different places is ideal.

When you purchase one of these to store your information, you can get peace of mind. You can be secure in the knowledge that your files are safe. However, it is important to follow the directions to make sure that you backed up the files correctly. It can also be good to back up if the files on the internet or somewhere else if the files are especially important.

Jeff is a proud contributing author and writes articles on several subjects including, health and fitness, computers, finance and home & family. Would you like information about the pros and cons of a reverse mortgage or maybey you'd like to learn about quilting Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_Gus

Online Backup and Local Storage

There are many thoughts as to where is the best place to back up your data - There are a couple of considerations to make, but on the whole - get your data off-site and as far away as possible.

Local backups to network attached drives, or tapes are all well and good, and in most cases are a fast and handy way to recover data in the event of a loss, but what happens if this local solution fails? Local storage devices can certainly fall over, so if it's your only backup safety-net - what do you do in this circumstance?

As I've mentioned, if your data is stored off-site, and a local data issue occurs, it is a simple case to get operational again. What happens if thieves break in and steal all of your computer equipment - including your local back-up devices? What happens if your building is affected by fire or flood? Get your data off-site!

Local backups are an excellent idea, they are fast and easy to work, and are quick and easy to restore data from should you need to. I'm not enforcing the idea of getting rid of these devices - far from it, but I am advocating supplementing them with a common sense off-site storage solution.

Apparently, film director Francis Ford Coppola was broken into last year; all of his computer equipment was stolen - as well as his backup drive. He lost 15 years of computer records including family photographs and film scripts.

An automated online secure backup system is the way forward. By installing a simple piece of software, you can instruct your computer to send automatic back-ups over the internet at pre-determined times. This software does not noticeably slow your computer down, and can be programmed to back-up at convenient times, as well as send multiple generations of files to the backup data-centre.

The beauty of sending your data over the internet to be backed up, is that operator errors are reduced - i.e. the computer will not forget to perform the back-up, and does not need to rely on a staff member taking a disk or tape off-site with them.

Data is sent to be backed up in a secure encrypted format, meaning only you can unlock the code and decipher the data should you need to perform a data restore - it is all done automatically, and is easy to operate - in-fact, most people install the software and let it get on with its work. Logs are sent by email confirming successful backup, and any errors are reported immediately.

Typical off-site storage costs have came down greatly over the last few years, and for the price of a cheap meal out, your data can be safe, secure and located off-site automatically.

Online secure data backup - Better be safe than sorry. Why not look at a cost-effective online secure data backup system. Free Trial Available. Andrew Beatt - http://www.onlinesecurebackup.co.uk - a business necessity, not a luxury. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Beatt

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery - When You Need it Most

This article mainly related with storage backup and recovery. It describes what are all the hardware's used in the storage backup and recovery technologies. So many hardware components used in the Storage Backup areas. It is not the article to bring out the functions of that hardware parts. It gives the information and related technical details of that hardware used in the storage backup and recovery technology.

There are three main important hardware's are used in the storage backup and recovery technology. They are Server, Subsystems and Switches. Each one has its own hardware parts. Let's see the information and technical details of this hardware parts.

Server - Master Server

The Master server performs all Backup administrative functions and controls the backup scheduling for each media server. The requirements needed for Master Server,

o Processors
o Memory
o I/O Connectivity
o Operating System
o Backup Software

Media Server

The media server performs the backup operations under the direction of the master, with all backup data stored locally on the media server and its respective storage devices. The same above Master Server requirements are applicable to Media Server also.

DAS, SAN, NAS Storage Subsystems

Direct attached storage (DAS), storage area network (SAN), and network-attached storage (NAS) are the three basic types of storage subsystems used in Storage backup hardware management. DAS is the basic building block in a storage system, and it can be employed directly or indirectly when used inside SAN and NAS systems. NAS is the highest layer of storage and can be built on top of a SAN or DAS storage system. SAN is somewhere between a DAS and a NAS.

Hardware used in the Storage subsystem - SCSI

It is abbreviated like Small Computer System Interface. It is the famous storage subsystem component used in all medium and small level computer interfaces. A mechanism called 'Cable Sharing' used here. It can support the data transfer rate up to 320 MB/s.

PATA

Parallel Advanced technology Attachment is shortly named as PATA. It can support data transfer up to 133 MB/s. Nowadays SATA replaces this PATA in all areas. But the recent version UDMA133 is used in some subsystems depends upon the customer requirement.

SATA

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment is commonly known as SATA. It is the very common hard disk interface used in all personal systems. One SATA port permits one device to connect to it.

SAS

It means Serial Attached SCSI. The name itself tells, it can be seen as a merged SCSI and SATA interface. It has various data transfer rates like 185, 374, 750, and 1,500 MB/s. SATA devices can connect to SAS but SAS devices can't connect with SATA ports. It is specifically designed for the high-end servers. SAS offers the best of SCSI and SATA.

FC

Fibre Channel has a main advantage of its length. It works the same like SATA, but it can covers the distance up to 2kms (Example: Single Mode Fibre). FC offers speeds of 100, 200, and 400 MB/s.

iSCSI

Internet SCSI is shortly known as iSCSI. It is normally used in all LANs. It is Low-cost alternative to FC. Easier to manage because it uses the common TCP/IP protocol and common Ethernet switches.

AoE

ATA over Ethernet. It is a very low cost alternative to iSCSI. It encapsulates ATA commands into low-level Ethernet frames and avoids using TCP/IP. A lot of add-on initiator/target software will support both iSCSI and AoE.

Ethernet Switches

A switch is something that is used to turn on or off various electronic devices. However, in computer networking, a switch is used to connect multiple computers with each other. Since it is an external device it becomes part of the hardware peripherals used in the operation of storage backup and recovery. This connection has done within an existing Local Area network (LAN) only and is identical to an Ethernet hub in terms of appearance except with more intelligence. These switches not only receive data packets, but also have the ability to inspect them before passing them on to the next computer. That is, they can figure out the source, the contents of the data, and identify the destination as well. Because of this uniqueness; it sends the data to the relevant connected system only, thereby using less bandwidth at high performance rates. Ethernet switches were used to provide connections and link aggregation between the backup clients, media servers, and master server using network speeds of 100 Mb/sec, 1 Gb/sec, and 10 Gb/sec.

SAN Switches

SAN switches were used to provide Fibre Channel connections between the Backup media servers and the tape libraries. The below listed companies are working with SAN switches worldwide.

Muthu Senthil Kumar M - Design Engineer, Tata Elxsi Limited, ITPB Road, Whitefield, Bangalore - 560048, India - Mail: mskumar@tataelxsi.co.in - Phone: +91 9916516728 Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Muthu_Senthil_Kumar_M

USB Flash Drives - Portable Storage At Its Best

A USB flash drive is a small portable storage device that plugs into the USB port on your computer. A USB drive can hold anywhere from a few Megabytes up to 64 Gigabytes or more.

Because USB flash drives use the USB interface and the USB mass storage standard, they do not need a driver, and are compatible with virtually every modern computer. Nearly all modern computers have support for USB built into the operating system.

USB drives range in price from a few dollars, up to several thousand, depending largely on their storage capacity. USB drives are considered very reliable, and are not subject to damage as easily as CDs or floppy disks.

Flash drives have many uses. The most common use is transporting files between computers. Many people use flash drives to transport files and data from their school or work computers to their home computers. Flash drives are also very useful for backing up or repairing infected computers. Some specialized flash drives can also function as digital media or MP3 players. Usually these USB drives will have a sounds output as well as a simple user interface.

Flash drives may also be used for applications and even operating systems. If your computer has the ability to boot up from your USB port, you can boot up from an operating system installed on your USB flash drive. USB drives can also be used for using applications that do not need to be installed on the host computer. For example, Mozilla Firefox has a version for flash drives. This allows you to use your favorite programs on any computer.

As technology continues to advance, USB flash drives continue to become cheaper, hold more data, and have more features. Even currently, USB drives are pretty universally considered the best form of portable data storage.

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