Whenever anyone buys technology, they want the best there is for the cheapest price possible. But what constitutes best when thinking about external hard drives? Sure, there’s space to consider, but it shouldn’t be all you consider. It is the obvious one though, so we should probably start with it.
Size isn’t everything
So! Space—how much do you realistically need? Drive space on an external hard drive can now push into several terabytes. Unless you are running a global Megaupload-style piracy network, it’s hard to believe that any ordinary user would require more than 1TB. I don’t know the exact maths, but that’s over a thousand DVD quality films. It’s probably a billion Word documents, or something. I’ll almost certainly say it a few more times—but don’t buy a drive based purely on size, especially if you fancy backing up anything important on it. A massive, cheap drive is much more likely to fail on you than a smaller (but better built) one.
The odds are that you’ve overestimated how much space you really need anyway. Think about it—has anyone ever actually even filled an iPod?
What’s Your Time Worth?
Next up: Transfer speed. Most specifically, read and write speeds. Now, your sparkly new external hard drive might have enough capacity to store every speck of information in the world, but if the read/write speeds are poor, you’re going to spend your life watching a progress bar. And fuming. Your read speed is the speed at which you can access the information/films/music you’ve put on the drive, and the write speed is how fast you can put it on there in the first place. Your write speed is generally going to be lower than the read speed.
If you’re a terrific procrastinator like I am, a poor write speed is enough to put you off ever backing up anything.
How do you operate?
This is a fundamental point, and often overlooked—make sure that the External HDD you’re thinking of buying is compatible with your operating system! Are you a Mac or a PC? It should be obvious, but users could save themselves a little aggro by simply checking the specifications when they buy the product, rather than wait until the thing has arrived. You also need to think about logistics. Are you thinking of buying an external hard drive for your home PC or maybe to compliment a tablet pc? You don’t want to buy an external hard drive which is bigger than your sleek new tablet!
What have you read today?
Ultimately, there are *lots* of reviews of just about every External HDD on the market, and most of them are well-informed. Any lesser concerns you have about the product you want to buy, such as noise, vibration or even heat will probably be covered. Although most drives nowadays are better than they have been in recent years, you might be a little unnerved when you try to backup a file and your drive begins a Richter Scale 8 earthquake when it starts up. It is definitely worth checking—and is also something that often separates cheaper drives from the more expensive ones.
Certain External HDD’s also have in-built protection from knocks and drops, and it is especially worth thinking about if you happen to be the clumsiest person you know.
The Truth is…
…that ultimately you get what you pay for. Of course you should shop around for the price you want—but do it with a good quality External HDD and it’s difficult to go too far wrong. Don’t bother with big, cheap drives. It’s not worth the headache they come with. You’d be better off buying a slightly smaller drive—one that you won’t want to destroy with a hammer after six months.
