|
|
External Hard Drive - buy it or build it?
|
|
Many people have, or are considering, an external hard drive for backing up their computer's data. With the price of hard drives today, they are a real bargain. If you watch and catch a sale with rebates, you can get a surprisingly good deal.
The best pricing is in the smaller external drives, 40GB to 80GB
Another way to get an external hard drive is to put one together yourself. It's a lot easier to find a sale price on an internal hard drive than an external hard drive. There are very good prices and choices on external hard drive enclosures
Pay attention to the computer connection. You will want either a USB 2.0 or IEEE1394 (a.k.a. Firewire) version, depending upon the connections already available in your computer. Unless you know you have an IEEE1394 connection, plan on the USB 2.0 option. It will almost always work on slower USB connections, but they'll be s-l-o-w. You can even get external drives or cases that provide both USB 2.0 and IEEE1394 connections; they will just cost you more.
If you're going to build your own external hard drive, be sure to get a standard ATA / "parallel ATA" hard drive. Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives do not work in these kinds of cases.
While there are some cases that are made specifically for serial ATA drives, the connections are not compatible with USB2 or with IEEE1394. SATA drive cases simply pass the same SATA connection through the case. They require the same unique connection to the computer that the SATA drive itself would require for internal installation.
Link to this page — just add this code to your web page!
<a href="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/external-hard-drive.php">External Hard Drive</a>
Copyright © 2005-2006 Terry A. Stockdale
|
|
