How to Buy an External Hard Drive
External hard drives can provide up to a terabyte of data storage for under a $100. You can easily store data of over 750,000 MP3s or photos, or over 230 feature length movies by boosting a terabyte in your PC within $100. Mega-huge towers or low-priced Windows tablets, both connect to at least one hard drive and if your system supports extra input/output ports then you can easily connect more, this allows to back up system files in case the primary storage is corrupted.
Desktop-style drives are usually fixed in the work system and have a 3.5-inch mechanism that require a power adapter. Since video or extensive data transferring require high usage, a drive with built-in cooling fan is good as it increases its life. Secondly, Notebook-class hard drives or pocket hard drives have a 2.5-inch mechanism that easily fit in a pocket and use data cable for power. The highest storage in a Desktop-style drive is 6 TB, while some manufactures increase storage by using two to four mechanisms in a single drive chassis. The lesser 500GB and 1TB drives are still in demand since pocket drives reach up to 2TB.
Multiple Drives: Buying an external RAID array can be costly and complex but it increases speed, capacity and data protection. For storing important data you don’t want to lose its good to consider a device with support for RAID levels 1, 5 and 10. The Notebook-class contains external solid-state drives (SSDs), that comes in smaller storage from 64GB to 512GB. The drive is of waste if you are not interested in the SSDs shock-resistance feature because if you connect the SSD to your PC with USB 2.0 interface it gives slower transfer rate compared to Thunderbolt and USB 3.0/3.1. Therefore, it is better to use SSD as internal instead of external drive or buy Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 external SSD roughly costing $200 to $400. However, they are more expensive compared to a simple 500GB USB 3.0 hard drive which costs $50 to $60.
External drives connect to PC’s USB 2.0/3.0 ports through a data cable. In other instances FireWire (400 and 800), eSATA or more obscure and very rare connectors such as USB 3.1/USB-C or iSCSI are used. ISCSI uses Ethernet cables and is primarily used on professional-grade drives like the DroboPro. This differs from SAN or Nas technologies as they are used for connecting multiple drives to multiple systems. USB 3.0 is the most in demand due to its fast transfer speed. The latest version USB 3.1 uses the smaller USB-C connector and has the same speed of 10Gps as the original Thunderbolt.
All convertible tablets, ultra books and hard drives have at least one USB 2.0 port at 480Mbps throughput, unlike the uncommon FireWire ports 400Mbps and 800Mbps which are signal-compatible. They have the same wires but different FW400 and FW800 connectors. FireWire port supports connecting multiple drives if connected together earlier.
The eSATA interface is a faster than USB 2.0 giving a transfer rate of 3Gbps, but requires either a USB cable, or USB/eSATA cable with connector or an external AC adapter as it lacks providing power over the connector cable. Since Thunderbolt and USB are in demand, they have taken over eSATA drives. The USB 3.0 interface is faster compared to eSATA with a theoretical 5Gbps throughput, with the ability to connect to USB 2.0 port but giving slower transfer rate according to USB 2.0 speeds. While some drives come with multiple ports such as a triple interface drive with USB 2.0/3.0, FireWire 800 and eSATA, you can only connect a single drive to a single system, and adding multiple drives will increase cost and complexity. The USB 3.1/USB-C can use a compatible hardware as it uses smaller connectors compared to other USB. Many USB sticks and drives come with both USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 connectors. In some cases adapters may be used for older USB drives if want to be plugged in USB-C ports.
Thunderbolt and Lightning
Thunderbolt previously known as Light Peak is a new, interconnect technology created by Intel and mastered by Apple. Since the existing systems work with copper cables and existing connectors, the original idea of Thunderbolt using fiber optics for prompt optical link was dropped, as it was impossible to add new connectors to systems. Liker FireWire, Thunderbolt can be connected with one connector to multiple systems, able to drive both monitors and external hard drives. Visually identical to mini-Display Port connectors, the Thunderbolt is able to boot a Mac although some might not be compatible. The fastest of all is the Thunderbolt 2 giving a transfer rate of 20Gbps and is becoming increasingly popular as a niche player for professional-grade systems such as Apple, Dell and HP, in the high end desktops and mobile workstations where there is extensive data transferring.
Thunderbolt drives promise the G-Technology G-Dock eV with Thunderbolt which are present in systems such as Dell and HP whereas other manufacturers hesitate to adopt this high priced interfaced.
The LaCie 5big is the fastest, breaking speed records, mainly for scientists and professional graphic artists coming at a hefty price tag. AMD and Texas instruments indicates to challenging technology Dock Port or Lightning Bolt, but yet remains to be seen if interest here will be in a competing interconnect technology.
For high speed drives, it is obvious that a 7200rpm drive will be faster than a 5400rpm drive depending whether you want prompt data transferring interface like eSATA (fast), USB 3.0/3.1 (faster) or Thunderbolt (fastest), then opt for the 7200rpm drive. If it depends on your budget and are restricted to using USB 2.0 or FireWire 400/800 then trade speed for capacity and opt for the largest 5400rpm drive. If speed is the only requirement then opt for multiple drives such as 7200rpm, 10000rpm or SSD over Thunderbolt2 that is the fastest and most expensive, connecting to a single SSD via Thunderbolt or USB 3.0/3.1.
Consider features such as color and design after you have gone through the above criteria. The software may be a concern if there is no backup plan. The bundled software isn’t important if using the drive as an extra storage or to back up built in Windows or Mac software. Make sure to look for drives that give 3 to 5 years warranty and avoid going for cheaper one with one year warranty especially when your data is too precious as it can bail on you.