If you use your computer as a primary source of entertainment, you may soon find it clogged up with space-hungry downloads and large multimedia files. Why not get an external hard drive? That way you can easily backup your photos, videos and music to a larger storage device and open up more space on your computer’s main hard drive. Generally, external hard drives come in three main sizes (physical size): 1.8”, 2.5”, and 3.5”. The 1.8” drives are the smallest and the more expensive; the 2.5” drives are portable and are the same as you would find in a laptop computer; and the 3.5” drives feature massive storage capacity and faster transfer rates even though they are bigger and require external power supply.
Always remember that power supply plays a key role in external hard drives’ performance and stability. An insufficient power supply will tend to lead to system instability, speed decrease and even data loss—things you don’t want to happen with your computer. The 1.8” and 2.5” external hard drives usually come with a Y-shaped USB cable to extract power from two USB ports, so that there will be enough power to spin up the drive.
Besides, hard drives can be extremely fragile, and things like excessive vibration or sudden jolts can cause mechanical parts inside a hard drive to fail, potentially resulting in massive data loss. Therefore, you should always remove your drive safely by using the ”Safely Remove Hardware” feature. The drive will then gently power itself down after you stopped the hardware.
Memory is priceless. That’s why you should backup most important files to prevent them from disappearing forever, and that’s exactly what an external hard drive can do for you.
