Your Hard Drive is Full: Options on Getting More Disk Space

Disaster! Your computer is refusing to write the last pictures you took on your trip: hard disk full. No free space, no matter how much you tried to save. What is there to do? You have several solutions: to buy another PC(just kidding), or save the data on an external device like a DVD, a memory stick, or an external hard disk drive. This last choice, brings the best comfort and a lot of free space. An external hard disk drive could be an investment that will be worth the costs in the future.

USB or FireWire?

The external hard disk drives, can be connected in two ways: USB or Firewire. The USB connector is very popular, basically most Personal Computers and Macs have one or more included in their structure. The only difference between the two, the USB and FireWire is the speed at which they function. The USB connection is much slower than FireWire, but it will allow you to do your work in sufficient time. As an example, an external hard disk drive connected thru an USB connection, will copy a DivX movie, sized at 700MB in 36 seconds, and an MP3 album in 5 seconds. With a FireWire connection the transfer speed is extremely fast, but the problem is in the price, because the external hard disk drives that use a FireWire connection cost more than the USB connected ones. Connecting an external hard disk drive is actually no problem at all, a simple USB 2.0 cable, or a FireWire cable is all you need to connect it to a computer, excepting the cases where the external hard disk needs to have an independent power source.

Is your data "precious"?

Save your data as often as possible! Your photos, your music or your e-mails are important, and to avoid losing them, you need to keep them safe on an external hard disk drive. All the big companies offering this type of product, have introduced an automatic process of saving the data daily, so that in the same time you will protect your data from all incidents, whether they were done by you or by some other problem, such as a computer error, viruses or other related things that could affect your data. To avoid such problems, some models have integrated a password protected access system.

Don't throw anything away! Archive!

If you bought an external hard disk drive, you have made a good decision, your data will be much safe, and you will be more relaxed on your computer when working with important data. You can archive anything, from games, to videos, to photos, with out worrying about a computer break down. Doing this is always a good thing, in order to avoid head aches. Spend some time into ordering the data into directories, such as Music, Games, Videos, Web Sites, E-Mails. This will save you a lot of time later when trying to find them.

Protection

You need to treat your external hard disk drive as any other fragile object. It is preferred to not let it fall, to not forget it some where behind the computer, but to find a stable place for it. Depending on the model, you can place it horizontally or vertically. Make sure you keep it at a normal temperature, so it will operate in normal conditions. From time to time, it is suggested to defragment it, using specific software, in order to save space on it. A utility you can use for defragmenting it, for Windows is PerfectDisk.

Easy To Travel With

Small, comfortable, and good looking. These are the external mini drives, a new category that competes with the USB memory sticks. The capacity on these devices varies from 5GB to 100GB, a lot of companies offering very small sizes, about the size of a credit card, carrying a 60g weight. Much more reliable in storing data than the USB memory sticks, and less expensive, these devices offer multiple possibilities. Videos, music or photo albums can travel a long distance with out much effort. An USB cable, and once arriving at your destination, your data can be accessed on another computer.