Let’s talk tech – the external hard drive

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External Hard drives are versatile and fun to use. They are great for storage but are also good add-ons for computers. I have several thumb-drives which I use to back up files and take items with me between work and home. While they are primarily used for storage of files outside your main computer, there are other uses for them as well.

Some Uses for External Hard Drives

• Data Storage
• Portable Applications
• Create a portable media center (more details for this to come)
• Backup your computer
• Organize music and video files

The Crown Jewel

A little over a year ago, Hitatchi became the first company to launch a 1 Terabyte external hard drive. That’s 1000 gigabytes, or about 300 hours of video or about a million songs. When these hard drive monstrosities hit the shelves of CDW and Tiger Direct last year, my coveting of the sleek and sultry external hard drive began.

The first models were $399, and as of today, they are priced, if you look in the right places at about $180 to $399, depending on size, brand name and manufacturer tweaks.

My only issue with this type of hard drive was that I had no idea what I would do with that much space. My laptop is backed up to an 80GB external that I also use to back up my music and files.

One of my real goals is to set up a portable media center. However, a portable hard drive is not self sustainable and would not perfect solution, since I would want an operating system driven media center that I could attach to my television.

While the terabyte is attractive and in technology bigger is better when it comes to capacity, I don’t think this is the right choice for me.

The Practical Solution

The most use out of my external hard drives comes from the ability to swap out data quickly and keep information off of my laptop without having a billion CD’s and DVD’s with my data slow degrading on them.

I use Portable Apps, which not only makes me a rock star super spy on any computer other than my own, but also let’s me store data that I know I will be able to open no matter what computer I am working on. Portable Apps are smaller versions of normal sized apps. The largest benefit to this is that I can use Firefox and keep all of my plugins, and bookmarks on it. Using a normal USB thumb drive I can load the same version of Firefox onto my computer at the office and not only doesn’t it take up space on my hard drive, but any bookmarks I add I can then take home and run on my laptop. All this just by plugging in and loading the program from my drive.

Since I am also in school I keep, on that very same drive a folder for the current class I am taking. (Currently Corporate Finance) This way I am able to open my documents, textbooks and other paperwork from my drive.

So, what do you use your external drives for?

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Tags: hard drive, portable apps, terabyte, thumb drive, tips