Protect Your Business with an External Hard Drive

If you run a small business or have a home office, chances are that you use a computer to track your business, customers, purchase orders, vendors, inventory, and other data. You will then, no doubt, understand the importance of that data, who is authorized to view or manipulate the data, and how to provide that access when needed. One way to do this is to set up your own server. This can be prohibitively expense for many small businesses or a home office. The next best thing is to buy an external networked hard drive. This will allow multiple users to access the necessary data and keep the data safe in one place. Even if you do not feel the need for a networked drive, it is a good idea to have an external USB drive for backups that can easily be taken out of the office or put in a safe in case of disasters. What? You say you aren't doing backups? Oh, my...

Western Digital My Book Office Edition
This is, hands-down, the best external drive on the market for a small business or home office. This is a 500GB drive and connected via a USB 2.0 port. The best feature of this drive is that It provides continuous automatic backups. This can save you a lot of trouble and the extra expense of separate backup software. This hard drive is only 6.5H x 5.4H x 2.1W inches. It has a maximum transfer rate of 480 Mbits/s and can be had at Circuit City for only $134.99. The only drawback with this unit is that it can only be access through a network if the host computer is turned on.

Netgear ReadyNAS Duo
The Netgear ReadyNAS Duo is the top of the line in network drives. It can connect to the network through USB 2.0, SATA-150, or Gigabit Ethernet, which will provide the fastest data retrieval. This model will hold 500GB and features a drive speed of 7200 rpm. This drive can be bought for $400.00 which makes it about $0.80/GB.

Iomega StorCenter
Iomega makes a very worthwhile contender in this arena. It has a size of 1000GB. It connects through USB2.0, SATA-300, or Gigabit ethernet. At only $359.00, that's a cost per GB of only $0.36. The disk speed of this model is 7200 rpm and also features USB printer sharing.

Synology Disk Station DS207+
This network drive holds 1000GB and sells for $547.00, providing a cost per GB of $0.55. It connect to the network through SATA-300, USB2.0, and Gigabit ethernet. It features a disk speed of 7200 rpm, a nice bookshelf design, and simple to use software.

Maxtor Shared Storage II
Maxtor has always been a leading hard drive manufacturer and they are no different for their network drives. This unit holds 1000GB and has a price tag of $500.00, giving it a cost per GB of $0.50. It has a disk speed of 7200 rpm. This drive is notable for its user-friendly file system.

If you do not have an external or network drive already for your home office or small business, it is time to get with the program and take a look at one of these units. They can save you a lot of time, trouble, and relief if there should ever be a crash, data loss, or disaster.