Remember how freeing it felt getting a 128 MB flash thumb drive about 10 years ago? Even up until a couple of years ago, getting a portable external hard drive that could hold 160 GB seemed like a great little personal luxury – you could carry your movies and your music and your data anywhere.

These days, even as these devices become extremely affordable, people do think twice before buying. They know that there’s cloud storage to be had for next to nothing at all.

If they buy their own personal hard drive, they figure, they could drop it or lose it or something. Cloud storage is forever. Why bother with a portable external hard drive, they feel.

The thing is, cloud storage isn’t as great as you might think. If you get a virus on your computer or if you any need to wipe your hard drive, it’s a lot easier to restore everything from a hard drive you have in your drawer than it is to download hundreds of gigabytes.

And anyway, who has the time or the patience to repeatedly stream a movie every time they want watch? In short, a portable external hard drive still makes sense.

Buying a drive, the choice today is between the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. It would make a lot of sense to buy 3.0, because it doesn’t cost any more.

Of course, most computers don’t have a USB 3.0 port. But no matter, new computers that come out these days mostly have them.

Practically every computer should have 3.0 support withing a year or two. Until then, your superfast hard drive still can work with an old 2.0 port.

Stay away from FireWire though – that’s a standard that is nearly gone now. If you want something that’s even faster than USB 3.0, you should consider Intel’s Thunderbolt – something that’s only shown up on Apple computers so far.

Thunderbolt is pretty expensive. A mere cable for Thunderbolt costs $50. If you can find it. The upside though is that it can transfer data at twice the speed of USB 3.0.

Since Thunderbolt really hasn’t shown up anywhere yet, might not make much sense looking for a Thunderbolt hard drive. You might be able to use it with your newest Apple computers. You probably wouldn’t be able to use it on anyone else’s computer.

eSATA is a great option too, though that’s exclusively designed for hardware connections. Most new laptops feature eSATA these days. They’ll usually double up as a USB port too. If you get one of these hard drives, you’re in luck. They are as fast as USB 3.0.

Do consider springing for a network attached storage drive or a Wi-Fi drive. This is something that you don’t have to actually physically connect to your computer.

Basically, portable drives are dirt cheap. And they are super compact too. There’s quite nothing like owning a capacious 1TB hard drive that’s the size of the palm of your hand.

Buying a Portable External Hard Drive is a post from: Computer Spot

For most people, the large amount of storage space they get on today’s computers is enough for whatever they can pile onto it.

However, there are some people that need more space. Instead of buying yet another computer, you can buy external hard drives that can store what you need without adding too much to what you have in your home.

These can be downright small, and can even be portable when you do not want to lug your computer when going somewhere. If you need more space, this is the way to go.

Those that store a lot of music on their computers find that they soon run out of space. If you write your own music, you are going to need tons of extra space.

You can buy almost as must memory as you already have on your computer for around a hundred dollars, give or take.

This means that you can have double the space for far less than you would if you were to buy a more powerful computer or if you had to buy a second one just for your music needs. Music tracks take up a lot of space so give yourself a break and get what you need.

If you take a lot of photographs or have a photography business, external hard drives are going to be great for you too. You can put any projects you have finished on this and keep them there.

Once it is full you can store it safely and then get a new one to start filling it again. Most photographers keep large versions of their pictures and they have a lot of them. The extra space you find on the hard drive that hooks up to your computer externally is going to be a great way to file things away without overwhelming your desktop or your laptop.

Gamers also benefit from having external hard drives. You can keep a few games on your computer at a time, but you may find it hard to keep things moving. Your computer is going to slow down and your game play is going to be ruined as a result.

Instead of storing all of these games on your main hard drive, you can put your games on your external drive and then you can keep your computer fast. You can store many more games this way and you won’t have to delete something you love to make room for something new.

To find out more about external hard drives, have a look around online or go to your local computer and technology store to see what is out there. Some are connected to the computer simply and some are not so easy to use.

Some are more portable than others, and there are obviously differences in the amounts of memory each is going to offer.

You can easily find something that will fit your needs and that won’t cost you an arm and a leg to buy.

You already spent that must on your computer, now it is time to save a little cash.

External Hard Drives is a post from: Computer Spot

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Technology has certainly come a long way in the past few decades. Gone are the huge contraptions that used to characterize computers.

Nowadays, you can easily purchase a notebook computer that weighs in at less than 6 pounds. However, one thing hasn’t changed.

Hard drives still occasionally crash and frustrated users are left trying to figure out just how to do hard drive data recovery on their own.

Hard drives aren’t perfect, although they’re amazing examples of mechanical engineering. Physical damage can easily occur since these disks are spinning at such high speeds.

The smallest interference while in use can cause damage in certain areas. Various features have been put into place to reduce the likelihood of a critical hard drive failure, but these are not 100% effective.

Sadly, physical damage isn’t the only reason why you may need to attempt hard drive data recovery. Many people accidentally wipe out their hard drives because they’re not sure what they’re doing.

If you do know a good deal about computers, and are not the one who messed up the hard drive in the first place, it may be possible for you to do your own hard drive data recovery.

Keep in mind that to do this, you may need to fix your master boot record, or retrieve data from a physically damaged disk.

If you can’t do this, then you’ll need to employ the services of a hard drive data recovery expert. Actually, if your system crashes and you don’t actually recover data for a living, I’d suggest you go straight to a hard drive data recovery expert.

One thing though…they’re expensive. Come on, these guys are specialized in what they do. You didn’t really expect that any hard drive data recovery expert would do it for free, did you?

You know what can really help you save money if your hard drive does crash? Backing up your data.

It seems like such a sensible thing to do, doesn’t it? Some users partition their hard drive.

This makes it easy for you to do your hard drive data recovery because chances are only one partition will fail. If you’ve backed up your files, you can continue working or, better yet, you can save them to an external source and get a new hard drive.

You should definitely invest in an external back up. Yes, it’s an inconvenience to remember to back up important files, but at least you won’t have to pay for a hard drive data recovery expert.

Should We Have An External Backup? is a post from: Computer Spot

Verbatim portable hard drive offers an easy and convenient solution for storage of data. I have recently purchased it and I am quite pleased with its performance.

For one thing, I like its size, its palm-sized and easy to take anywhere with you, and it is very stylish and durable too.

I would say it combines the best features of all hard drives. It comes along with the FireWire cable and a USB cable.

The USB cable can be used to obtain additional power as it is Y shaped. And due to the FireWire cable no external power supply is required.

The Verbatim offers quite a large space for storage, 320 GB is a huge space and you can easily use it to store your work information so that you don’t have to carry your laptop home.

However, there are a couple of things you will notice about it that might surprise you.

Firstly, the case looks like a metal case in the picture but when I bought it, it was actually a plastic silver case.

Secondly, the bottom of the drive heats up after one uses it for a few hours.

I would advise anyone using this drive that one should not use it for a long length of time. Otherwise it is perfect value for money.

Verbatim 320 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400 Portable External Hard Drive 96527 is a post from: Computer Spot