Buying an external hard drive doesn't have to be really difficult, please first read all the section on buying a standard hard drive. Now you done that let's move on, let's talk about a couple reasons why we would want to buy an external hard drive. External hard drives are great for storing information, backing up a computer, and moving data from place to place. There are two basic types of external hard drives, the first being a full-size drive and the second being a laptop or 2.5" sized external hard drive. Both have their pros and cons and we will discuss those later in this article. The larger full-size drives also have two or three different ways to connect your computer. The first and most common is a USB connector, drives built today may also have a FireWire connector, and some drives even give you an eSATA connector. Which is right for you? You will have to decide that for yourself, but we will try and give you the basic information on each type of connector and drive so you are informed.

Standard External Hard Drives: The standard external hard drive comes in many different sizes as well is types. You can either make your own by just buying enclosure and installing a hard drive you already hvae, these enclosures come in both IDE and SATA and cost between $20 and $50 on average. Or you can purchase the drive already in a enclosure that includes the cable and the power source. The power source is the main difference between a laptop drive size and full-size standard drives. Full-size standard drives have to have an power outlet to plug in the power source, while this might seem a hindrance it does help the drive to read and write much faster and larger sizes and capacities can be purchased. For instance full-size external hard drives can be purchased up to 3 TB in size why most laptop hard drives can only be purchased up to 1 TB. If you purchase an external standard hard drive it may also come with one or more of the optional ports as we discussed earlier this article, depending upon which ports your computer has to will help you decide which cable and connection type to use. Most all computer have several USB ports and this is the most common.
*Full Size USB Ext. hard drives come in all shape and sizes and have at least one power cord and one data cord.

2.5" or Laptop Ext. Drives: These small portable hard drives are fairly convenient, no bigger than a cell phone they fit into your pocket or laptop bag and can hold up to 1 TB of information. The biggest con with these drives is that their small and do not have a power source. Due to the fact that theyhave no power source they can run fairly slow and with some low powered units such as tablets and small laptops they might not even work correctly at all. For this reason some small laptop size external drives will come with a double USB connector. This is not in case you break one, this is more for the drive having more power connections to the unit so the proper voltage can be given to the drive and it will function normally. Small USB portable hard drives should only be used for backing up information temporarily or for when you are required to move information from place to place quickly without a power source. I personally recommend you use your backup drive at home whenever possible. With plentiful power you can use a full-size external drive that is dependable and can run at full speed.
*Smaller 2.5" Ext. USB portable hard drive are nice to use when you need it small and light.

Connectors: External connectors can be one of three different kinds or a combination of all of them. USB is the most common and eSATA is becoming more common due to its faster speed.

External Drive Connector Information:

USB 2.0 can transfer data up to 480 Mbps.( Most Common)

Firewire can transfer data up to 400Mbps (Older Connector developed by Apple)

eSATA can transfer data up to 3 Gbps for eSATA 2.0 and 6 Gbps for eSATA 3.0 (Both Currently the fastest)

Check out the warranty and reviews on your purchasing website as we've discussed before, be careful not to be caught up in the hype and fancy words. The main thing you want to know is does it work and does it work dependably. Be cautious and careful of installed software on these drives, I have several people year come in that have use the installed software to back up their computer and then forget their password. Once installed the software encrypts the data and if you don't know the password, it's lost. Most of time a simple program with no password can backup your system without a problem. I personally just copy and paste what I want to backup or transfer and that works fine. Don't complicate your life, it's complicated enough all on its own.

Check out Newegg.com they have lots of Hard Drives and detailed specification on each.

Coming Soon
Panda Computers Newsletter