How to buy external hard drives

A buying guide for purchasing an external hard drive.

An external hard drive is probably one of the most important purchases you'll make it terms of computer hardware. You'll hardly notice the external hard drive on a daily basis and may even wonder why you should bother buying one, but when one day your computer hard drive dies you'll be glad you bought on before all of your files and digital life was wiped out.

There are many, many kinds of external hard drives; they come in all shapes and sizes ranging in storage size from just a few gigabytes to a few terabytes. The average ones range in size from 250 gigabytes to 750 gigabytes; more then sufficient for the average computer user. You'll need to look for a few things when shopping for an external hard drive such as reliability, storage size, compatibility, and portability.

Reliability is probably the most important thing to consider, your external hard drive should be tried and tested and be able to withstand daily backups, occasional travel, and ease of use. An external hard drive should be built well and able to read/write hundreds of thousands of times in it's lifetime. After all you'll be backing up your data and files many times over the course of it's life. You'll want to do research on the brands with the best reliability; personally I only use Western Digital external hard drives but other reputable brands can be found.

Storage size is another consideration. A good size is one that is about double the capacity of your current computer's internal hard drive. This ensures you can easily back up the entire drive if needed while saving room for the future when you'll have a larger internal hard drive or for free space on your external drive to keep big files such as movies on. If you are a laptop owner you'll easily find an external hard drive to more then match your drive size in the laptop and will benefit from the extra space to store files you don't use often on your mobile computer.

External hard drives should be compatible with almost all computers; the most compatible ones rely on USB connections so you can literally plug and play with no software to add and no programming or formatting. Most external hard drives offer USB connectivity which is perfect for any computer user looking to simply the process of backing up and maintaining a safe copy of all their data.

Be sure to make sure your external hard drive works with your current computer and operating system with the biggest difference being between Apple and Windows based computers. While most drives will work on both, some drives cater only to Windows based recovery programs. Recovering your data after your main hard drive fails shouldn't be hard and if you can't use the recovery program you want, the task could be daunting for causal computer users.

Finally a good external hard drive should be relatively portable. Many companies make small portable drives that have considerable storage (up to 250 gbs) but you'll pay more per gigabyte for the pocket sized ones then for standard book size ones. Even the largest book sized external drives come in at under 10 lbs and can be transported in briefcases and bags. Some look better then others, so sometimes size isn't an issue and people may want a sleek looking backup drive on their desk. A truly portable drive should be USB connected and be easy to safely remove from the computer and power supply without risk of data loss.

Look to spend about 150 dollars for a good external hard drive between 250-750 gigabytes. Sometimes you'll be able to find deals of external hard drives for under 100 dollars but remember you'll pay more per gigabyte for small pocket sized drives and drives over 1 terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) will generally cost you a few hundred dollars. Threes a drive available for every computer user whether your looking to store thousands of media files, a few documents, or just a backup of your hard drive.