In this modern age of computing, an external hard drive is more important than ever. Although the internal disk drive on your computer or laptop can be useful, an external storage drive can be extremely valuable if it is put to good use. This article will give you a few tips about how to get the most out of your external hard drive.

1. You never need to worry about running out of space

Have you ever filled up your hard drive with so many media files and programs that your operating system started warning you to clean up your disk space? Today, many of our files are in the form of audio or video, which can take up a lot of file space. A single movie can often be more than 1 GB. If you store your media files on an external hard drive, you don't need to worry about getting these warnings and being forced to decide which files to delete. If you begin to run out of space on an external storage drive and don't want to delete any files - just buy another one!

2. An external hard drive makes it easier to upgrade your computer

How many computers have you gone through in the last couple decades? If you're like most people, you buy a new computer about every 2 or 3 years. That's about how long it takes our shiny, super-fast machine to become old, slow and obsolete. Every time you've bought a new computer you probably either lost all the files on your old computer, or you had to spend hours (days?) laboriously transferring them over to the new machine.

If you have an external disk drive, you never need to worry about this. When you buy a new computer, you simply plug your external hard drive into the USB port, and presto! - all your files are already there.

3. Easy to clean your system

Have you ever noticed that your computer begins its life as a light-footed gazelle, but soon turns into a plodding elephant? This is because over time your system picks up viruses, errors, and erroneous files. This can usually be fixed by performing a complete wipe and reinstalling your operating system, but most people are hesitant to do this because it will wipe out all their files. If you keep all your files on an external disk drive, you don't need to worry about this. It is a good idea to perform a complete wipe of your system every few months to keep it running as fast as the day you bought it.

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Sooner or later, something terrible will happen to your hard drive. This is not a good idea, but the good news you can use a hard disk with minimum disruption to survive failure - if your file.

Hard Drives Are Not Forever

You can do without, without notice, may be a virus to wipe out your data, fires or floods, the unit may be damaged, or could even be stolen. You may accidentally delete a file or an entireFolder, click with a shift of important files. And not only with emergencies, the importance of making backup ... If you buy a new computer, you can back up make it much easier for your files from old computer to new one.
Backup Strategies

You need a backup of all files or just the same thing? That depends on how you use your computer, how important your data, and how much you want to think about backup. If the drive is, you can reinstall the operating systemand all software. But the data that you created and saved (word processing documents, spreadsheets, e-mail, photos, music, etc.) may not be replaceable.

So to an absolute minimum, you should decide what are the most important files and make backups. Here are some simple ways to ensure a set of files:

* Attach files to an e-mail and send it to a friend. Or open a free web-based email account and send the file for themselves.

* Copy to another computer in your home orCorporate network.

* Call to your site or free web space.

* Burn to CD.

* Copy to a flash drive or an external hard drive.

We often - daily, weekly or monthly - to decide how often you update your files and how important it is to access the latest data in the event of a crash the hard drive and burns. But beware that the recovery is after a hard disk errorannoying if only the backup files, opt. It will take several hours to re-install the operating system and all software you have had. If you download the software, you may have lost the license or registration key, along with your data.

Backup on auto-pilot

I strongly urge the full system backup automatically, as may be all that is squirreled away in a safe, and restore the data will be a few clicks of the mouse. You can take on a pileCD-ROM, but you would need a lot of them once again a modern hard drive can store 100 GB or more. CD-ROM can hold about 700 MB of data, so that even with compression, you had more than 100 of them have to do the job. Not very practical, especially if it was necessary to restore the data.

Since hard drives are cheaper than ever, I recommend the establishment of an external hard drive and use it as a backup device for one or more computers. You can buyhigh capacity external drive for less than $ 1 per gigabyte. Iomega 33xxx series and the Maxtor OneTouch get good marks from reviewers and users, but other manufacturers like Seagate and Western Digital for a good product too. If you want a drive that supports a USB 2.0 or FireWire faster the connection, if your system supports this.

Backup Software

Backup software is also recommended in order to automate the process to obtain full or automaticincremental backup and restore only a deleted file or the entire disk. A good backup program also lets you store multiple versions of a file so you can go back in time and restore a file to the way it was a day a week or a month.

I use Acronis True Image (Windows), but have great things about Retrospect (Windows / Mac), who is free on Maxtor OneTouch, felt and SmartSync (Windows).

The loss of data that you have spent countless hours creatingone of the most frustrating things that can happen to a computer user. When it comes to backup, you do not think too much about whether it is worth. It just takes a little 'time and money to a complete backup of the automated system that gives you peace of mined data protection and disaster.

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