Top 6 most important things to consider when buying an external hard drive
The list of things to think about when buying an external hard drive can seem to be endless. What matters most to one person won’t necessarily matter most to another – some will be tied by budget, others will have a top of the range model in mind. Whatever the case, you’ll find the most important things to consider when buying an external hard drive below (the Buyer’s Guide goes into this in greater detail).
Desktop v. portable: will you need to take you external hard drive out and about with you or will it mainly be left in one place? Desktop drives are bigger, heavier and tend to require an external power source, whereas portable drives are generally powered by the USB port on your laptop/computer, relatively small and lightweight (check out my review of some of the best portable external hard drives).
Disk size: Clearly one of the most important factors is how much data you’ll be looking to store on your external hard drive. 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!
Speed of transfer: Data transfer speeds can vary considerably across the different types of connectivity technology employed by the drive. The standard USB2.0 connection is increasingly being replaced by faster ones, including USB3.0, FireWire and eSATA.
Security: All drives are relatively secure, but if you need to keep your data extra secure, you should look for a drive with specific types of encryption and protection (such as fingerprint recognition). Many manufacturers provide more secure versions of their standard models (think Buffalo Ministation DataVault versus the standard model).
Ease of use: You’d think that all external hard drives would be built equally simple. Turns out they’re not 
. Things to watch out for include requirements to: download specific types of back-up software; format the drive before use; use external power sources to run the drive; and various other things to drive you mad! If simplicity is what you’re after – and who isn’t – it’s best to go for a plug and play, USB powered drive with one touch or automated backup.
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, there tends to be some great offers on external hard drives at any point in time, so you should 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 hard drives).
Focusing on these things will help enormously when looking for the best external hard drives to buy. For more info on this, check out the Buyer’s Guide, or the Best For… pages.
Tagged: buffalo ministation vault, buyer's guide, disk size, external hard drive, featured, speed of transfer
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