Running Out Of Laptop Space? Just Add An External Harddrive (or Two)

Sooner or later, space starts getting tight on any computer, but there is an easy, affordable fix: external harddrives.

They’re great for backups too – I personally store all my photos and other large files on several external harddrives, and also have them all backed up on a separate one, which I keep off site, just in case something should happen at home (such as a fire, theft or lightning strike).

There are many different brands and sizes to choose from, and everyone has their favorite. I use Western Digital drives and have been very happy with them (knock on wood). Other big, well known names are LaCie, Seagate, SimpleTech, Iomega, Samsung, Transcend and Buffalo.

Prices have come down quite a bit since I got my first one, making it an affordable way to expand your laptop (and much easier than to install a larger internal hard drive) and easily back up your files. These days, you can get a good external hd for as little as $50. And many come in a variety of colors too.

A Couple Of Things To Keep In Mind When Shopping For An External Harddrive

Size – Both Physical and Storage
Do you want to be able to take it with you everywhere? If so, you want to look for a portable external harddrive that easily fits into laptop bags. There are lots to choose from, ranging in price from the mid $30s for a 3″x5″ 80GB Cirago to over $400 for Transcend’s 3″x2″ 128GB SSD18M solid state drive. While solid state is ideal for a drive that will be carried around, it is a lot of money. A great, more affordable (as well as colorful and rugged) option, is Transcend’s 3″x5″ 500GB StoreJet 25 Mobile at just under $100 (not a solid state). If you want a ton of storage space and don’t mind lugging around a larger drive, check out HP’s 8″x4.6″ 2TB Personal Media Drive, which sells for around $200.

If you plan on never taking your external hd with you, there are almost an infinite number of choices. One great option is a multi-disk harddrive with RAID technology. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks and comes in several different configurations, the most common being RAID0, 1 and 5. RAID0 splits all the data between 2 harddrives (also called striping), which speeds up write and read times. RAID1 creates an exact copy of everything on the first disk on the second disk (“mirroring”), so that if one crashes, you still have all your data on the second one. RAID5 requires a minimum of 3 disks and does both striping and mirroring. Some will let you switch between different RAID configurations so you can set it to RAID0 if speed is most important or RAID1 if security is your top priority. These types of drives are available from all the major manufacturers (and some smaller ones too).

Having said all that, people have had issues where one disk crashed and they were unable to recover the data from the other(s). I personally feel safer having multiple smaller external harddrives and backing up my data to at least two of them on a very regular basis, even if it’s not as convenient as having one unit, and you have to remember to back up.

Speed
The rpm tells you how fast the disk spins. A 7200rpm harddrive is faster than one at 5400rpm, but the faster disks also consumes more energy and gets warmer.

The Mb/s tells you how many megabytes are transferred per second.

Transfer rates are also dependant to some extent on the type of connection you use. Every mainstream external harddrive on the market has a USB 2.0 connection, but some also have FireWire and/or eSATA. FireWire and eSATA are faster than USB, but not all laptops come with those types of ports (they also need to be supported by your laptop’s motherboard). The first external harddrives using USB 3.0 were recently announced (with super fast transfer speeds), but you won’t be able to use them unless you have a motherboard that supports USB 3.0. A few have already been announced, but Intel says they will not support USB 3.0 until 2011.

Which Ones Come In Pink?

I obviously cannot write about any computer hardware without mentioning the pink ones. Here they are:

A-DATA
Classic CH91 (250, 320, 500 or 640GB) in a shiny, classic pink
Nobility NH92 (250, 320, 500 or 640GB) in Cherry Pink

Iomega
eGo Portable – 160 or 250GB in a shiny dark pink, or 320GB in Flamingo Pink

LaCie
Skwarim 60GB in bright pink

Samsung
S1 Mini (120, 160 or 250GB) in Sweet Pink
S2 Mini (160, 250, 320 or 500GB) in Sweet Pink

Seagate
FeeAgent Go 250 or 320GB in Think Pink

SimpleTech (Hitachi)
Signature Mini 250GB in Bubblegum Pink

Verbatim
Verbatim Portable 320GB in a nice muted pink

Western Digital
My Passport Essential 160 or 320GB in Vibrant Pink
WD also sells a pink skin for their My Book Home or Office Edition drives

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Tags: external harddrives, external hd, lacie, portable harddrive, seagate, usb external harddrive, western digital

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