What’s All This About External Hard Drives?
September 17, 2007
Hi y’all, I’m back this week with a brand new question from Kit. She asks,
Could you tell me about the pros and cons of using external hard drives? So many work at home moms I’ve talked to lately are purchasing them. Are there any tips or tricks we need to know about?
There are probably more pros to external hard drives than cons. 99% of the time, people get external drives for backup purposes or to carry copious amounts of data between two locations on a regular basis. Since we are talking in the WAHM community here, I expect it’s not the latter.
Think of them this way. You know how we used to carry around the 5″ floppies, then it was the 3.5″ floppies then it was CD’s and USB sticks? Well, an external drive really just acts/works the same way. Only, you get this huge amount of storage space.
This is what makes the external drive an excellent place to store backups or files you don’t use every day and want to archive. By moving them to an external drive, you free up your computer’s main hard drive.
Because external drives are mobile - just unplug them and go - that also means you can access your data anywhere e.g. a presentation at your clients’ office. There are smaller 2.5″ drives that can fit in your pocket. Very sleek and nice.
Tips?
- Don’t buy anything smaller than your existing hard drive size.
- Keep and work on those active files in your existing hard drive. You can work directly off an external drive but transferring/saving files can get slow.
- Unlike USB flash drives, external drives can be delicate. You really don’t want to drop it or handle it too much.
- Like your computer hard, they can fail. So if you store your backups in them, don’t just rely on that alone. You should always store your backups in as many different places as possible. E.g. one copy in the external hard drive and another one online or a 2nd external hard drive.
Thanks for asking, hope that answers some questions. Do you have a question? Don’t be shy, send them in.
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Great tips Lynette - it was because of you that I purchased a Mozy subscription! I have both the external hd and the mozy now and feel a lot safer. I was constantly worried about my hd failing (no idea how often it happens, but I was very worried).
I have a small USB flash drive (512megs, I think) just for being able to have certain documents that I would use at church or something, but not want to have to waste a CD for because the documents don’t take up 700megs). It’s been working fine, so far.
How do you know when you should get an external hard drive? I have a second hard drive on my computer, would I still need an external? And, if so, what would be a really good brand?
Glad Mozy worked out Tsoniki.
Mara, it all depends what you intend to do. You can store your backups and archive on your 2nd hard drive of course. An external hard drive works the same way like a second internal hard drive anyhow. Same thing different configuration.
You already mentioned that the files you need to transfer from office to church are pretty small so your USB drive will definitely be sufficient.
Just want to share this with you. One of my computers had a power supply failure once. The computer literally caught fire. Both of my hard drives died because of that. Surges happen for external hard drives too but the point is, the more backups you keep in different places, e.g. one 2nd computer, another on external and one online, the better off you are.
I agree with everything you’ve said, Lynette, especially the last point.
I’d even go so far as to say that one of your back ups should be kept in a fireproof safe (especially if you have lots of important data) and another should be kept off site. It may seem like overkill, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Plus, external hard drives are a great for systems back ups which will make a “ghost” copy of your current Windows/software/registry set up, so if your hard drive should fail, you can start with a new drive as if you were still using your old one. It would also save you from needing to re-purchase all of your old software, too.
Being in the web design business, an external hard drive is considered “necessary equipment”. Thankfully, the large drives are coming down in price so the average consumers can afford them — just purchased a sleek 300GB one for about $80 at Wally World (Wal*Mart).
~ Teli
Thanks, Lynette.
It’s nice to get confirmations and/or redirections from someone you trust! Home-business owners read things all the time about different gadgets and goodies which they “must have” to help their business grow. Many times newbies or non-tech folks wind up purchasing items that are nice but are not a “must”, as they were led to believe.
Thanks again for all the great info and keep it coming! We need all the reliable help we can get. ;)
Kit
Wow that is a good deal Teli. You’re so right on purchasing software. With all the downloadable software I buy these days getting them back is really tough. I have a special folder for downloaded purchased software. Plus a special part on it on the external hard drive as well.
Hey Kit, you’re most welcome.