Choosing The Best External Hard Drives

When choosing an external hard drive, there are several factors you need to take into account. The most important factor is the format of the drive. Of course you want to purchase a drive that fits into one of the ports on your computer! So before you even start looking for external hard drives, you're going to want to examine each of your computers and take note of which ports are available. The next factor you want to look at is the physical size of the drive. Generally, you want to buy the smallest drive possible. Aside from the size of the drive, you want to make sure that the drive requires NO EXTERNAL POWER SOURCE! I remember the first external drive I bought. It was a Seagate 500 gb external drive. It worked great, but I didn't know that it would only run when connected to a power outlet. The final 2 factors you'll want to consider are the speed of the drive and the brand manufacturer of the drive. In the following sections I will break down each factor point by point.

The vast majority of external hard drives you'll encounter will be based on the USB format. For personal use, it's a pretty good format. USB ports are standard on all PCs, Laptops, and on all Macs as well, so you can use a USB based Hard Drive on virtually any computer. Right now, USB 2.0 is the latest version. The transfer speed is decent at around 480 Mbit/s. For personal use, this speed is just fine.

You will also find some external hard drives that work off of the Firewire(IEEE 1394 interface). This interface is actually much better than the more common USB format. However, Firewire is found on far fewer computers. If you do chose to go the Firewire route, make sure that all of your computers are equipped with a Firewire (IEEE 1394 interface) port.

More recently, external hard drives have been formatted for ESATA and e-SATAP. ESAT is much more efficient than any of the previous data formats. It offers speeds that are 4 times as fast as USB and 2 times as fast as Firewire. These ports are becoming more common on laptop computers as well as some desktops. Again, if you want to use this format, make sure that all of your computers have the connections for it.

When you check the speed of any hard drive, you're going to want to pay attention to 3 key statistics. The first one is the format of the drive: USB, Firewire, ESATA, etc. Each format has its own transfer speed. Since we just covered that let's move on to number 2.

The second statistic is the hard drive's cache size. A cache is a term that refers to a reserved block of memory on the hard drive that is able to be read and written to faster than the rest of the memory on the drive. On a hard drive, the cache is used to store small amounts of data so that they can be easily retrieved later. Most hard drives you'll find will have cache sizes ranging from 8mbs-16mbs. Getting a drive with a 16mb cache will result it faster speeds, so if you can afford it then by all means do it. If you can't that's okay. For most hard drives, 8mb is just fine.

The third statistic you'll want to pay attention to is the RPM speed of the hard drive. RPM is short for "rotations per minute." Without getting into a lot of complicated technical jargon, the faster the hard drive spins, the faster it's able to read and write data. So, basically, higher RPMs = faster drives. With that being said, you're going to want to buy the highest RPM drive that you can. Go as high as you want with this stat, but by all means don't go any lower than 5400 RPM. Even the cheapest drives should at least be 5400 RPM.

There's a lot of debate over who makes the best hard drives. Personally, I prefer the companies that sell drives with the longest warranties. Hard drives can and do fail, so it's always a plus to be able to send back a defective drive to have it swapped out with a brand new one. In my experience, I've always received my best drives from Seagate. Ever drive I get from them has worked flawlessly. They also offer the longest warranty I've ever seen on a hard drive- 5 years! Granted, they don't offer 5 year warranties on all of their drives, but they do on a great number of them. When you look at the specifications for a drive you'll want to look at the section titled "Manufacturer Warranty." The longer the warranty, the better.

Alternatively, some companies allow you to purchase additional warranty coverage on the drives you buy from them. I generally don't do this because it costs more money and in most cases the manufacturer's warranty is more than sufficient. However, if the manufacturer's warranty is 2 years or less, then you might want to consider buying additional coverage. If it seems like a good investment to you then go for it.

As for other manufactures, Western Digital  and Samsung  are also pretty good. They don't offer warranties as long as those offered by Seagate, so I tend pass them over. For me, the warranty length is a huge selling point!

The size of the drive is all up to you. Smaller drives are more portable, but they may be slower as a result. The smallest fastest drives can be very expensive, while smaller average speed drives are very affordable. Personally, I prefer smaller drives because they're far more convenient. If you're going to go for a larger drive, make sure it's cheaper. Larger drives are less convenient, so you shouldn't be willing to pay as much for them.

DO NOT BUY DRIVES THAT REQUIRE A SEPARATE POWER CORD!!! Every drive you purchase should be able to run off of the port it's plugged into. Be it USB, Firewire, ESATA, etc. Separate power cords are a complete waste and they're such a pain to deal with.

Okay, I think that's everything. I hope you feel much more knowledgeable about external hard drives after reading this hub. Now, you can take your new found knowledge and purchase the perfect external hard drive. If you do get one after reading this, feel free to comment on which drive you ultimately decided to buy. I'm curious about such things! Also, feel free to check out my other hubs via the links located below.