Buyer’s Guide
So you want to get an external hard drive, but have ventured online to take a look and are now dazed and confused by the choice of makes, models and sizes available? I know exactly how you feel. Hopefully this buyers guide will take all the mystery out of buying your external drive, as I explain what factors are important:
Disk size:
Clearly one of the most important factors is how much data you’ll be looking to store on your external hard drive. How much space you need will clearly depend on what you do with your computer and what you’re looking to use your external hard drive for – some people choose to mirror their entire hard drive, others just to store the files that are important to them, for example family photos, legal documents, etc. As a general rule, you should probably try to buy as much disk space as you possibly can afford, in order that you build in some future proofing… you never know how much capacity you’ll need in years to come! To give you some idea, my recent holiday photos take up about 800MB, and a full-length feature film will consume around 1.5GB.
Security:
One of the most likely reasons you’re interested in an external hard drive will be to keep your files safe and secure just in case your computer decides to give up the ghost one day and take everything with it. But the downside of backing everything up to an external hard drive is that you now have all your precious files in one place, and this can be a worry for some. The answer is encryption, and many devices now come encrypted already built in to save you the hassle of doing so yourself (see other post here on best encrypted hard drives). Encryption means that to get access to the contents of your hard drive, someone will require a password or some other form of identification (e.g. fingerprint recognition). Many manufacturers provide more secure versions of their standard models (think Buffalo Ministation DataVault versus the standard model). If you’re thinking “hang on a minute, I could just store my files in the Cloud and not worry about any of this encryption malarky, they’d do it all for me!”, you’d have a point, but as I’ve discussed in another post, betting the house on Cloud isn’t necessarily the right answer either, there are definite advantages to having your data held locally, including recent examples of Cloud data storage providers proving vulnerable to hacking.
Speed of transfer/ease of use:
Speed of data transfer is driven by a number of factors, a key one being the technology employed to connect with your hard drive. Most external hard drives today use a USB 2.0 connection which has a top theoretical speed of 480MBps. Faster connections are increasingly available, through such technologies as FireWire (with up to 800MBps) and eSATA interfaces (again theoretically delivering up to 3,000MBps). Some external drives now even come with connections that support all 3 of these technologies, meaning you can maximise your transfer rate dependent on the specifications of your computer rather than the drive itself.
Ease of use:
These days you’d think that you’d be able to pick up any external hard drive, simply plug it into your laptop and use it, but no. Things to watch out for include the requirement to download specific types of software before you can back anything up, the need for some devices (notably eSATA) to have access to an external power source to run on and that many PCs don’t come with FireWire ports as standard. Standard USB 2.0 connecting devices are generally considered the easiest to use, in that they are both powered by their connection to your machine and can simply be plugged and unplugged without the need to shut down in the meantime.
Portability:
If you’re going to be taking your external hard drive out and about with you, you’ll probably be interested in a lightweight, more portable model. Indeed, there are models on the market that weigh not much more than your mobile phone, and we’ve looked at the most portable hard drives in another post. Additionally, you’re unlikely to want to lug around an extension cable everywhere you go, meaning that eSATA drives are probably not the best option (see above). For maximum portability, you really can’t go wrong with USB connected devices which derive their power from your laptop. Ultimately, if all you’re interested in carrying or transferring is a relatively small set of documents rather than a vast ream of photos, songs and films, you may find you’re better off using a standard memory stick and leaving your hard drive at home/office.
Cost:
Last – but certainly not least by any stretch of the imagination – you’ll have a price in mind when shopping around for your external hard drive. It’s generally said that you should buy as much disk space as you can afford, but clearly you need to play in the other factors discussed here. Thankfully, you’ll be able to find drives that provide great value for money whatever your budget (see more on this in post on Value for Money External Drives).
Hopefully this post has helped shape some ideas about what to consider when buying your external hard drive. Let me know if you think I’ve missed anything!
