Some things to look for in a portable external hard drive
When it comes to shopping for a portable external hard drive there are a number of factors to consider, and it pays to shop around carefully. Even though the prices of hard drives in general, and portable hard drives in particular, have fallen quite a bit in a short period of time, they are not insignificant purchases. It is important to not only find the lowest price on such a drive, but to choose a drive that is manufactured to the highest quality specifications as well. After all, the drive you buy will likely be used to store critical information for yourself or your business, and it is important to choose a drive that will keep that valuable information safe. Since portable external hard drives are often used by those who travel for business, it is also important to consider the weight of the drive. While the weight of the drive may not be critical in and of itself, when combined with the weight of the laptop, the briefcase and all the other items needed on the average business trip, it is obvious that shaving even a few ounces off the weight of the portable hard drive can be important. The storage capacity of the portable external hard drive is perhaps the most important factor for most people. The rule of thumb here is to buy as large a capacity hard drive as you can afford, since the price differential between different sized drives is not as large as it used to be. If you plan to use your external drive to back up your desktop PC, it is important that the external hard drive be at least as large as that on the desktop. Since an external hard drive is by its very nature portable, there are a number of factors to consider beyond the size and speed of the drive. Security is one such feature. If the drive is to be moved from place to place it is important to assign a password of other type of encryption to the data the drive contains, so that it will be useless in the event of a loss or a theft. With so much highly personal and sensitive business information being stored on portable hard drives these days, security is a critical factor. The connection to the PC is another important factor to consider, and there are a number of choices here as well. While the first external hard drives connected to their host computers via slow parallel port connections, the most common connections for the portable external hard drive these days are USB and firewire. While firewire connections are faster than traditional USB, not every PC will have a firewire port, so it is important to look at the specs of your PC before shopping for an external hard drive.
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