Advantages and Disadvantages of External hard disk drives
External drives are arguably the biggest growth area in data storage of recent times. They offer the possibility of transferring all user’s valuable data, documents, photographs, music and movies. Alternatively they can provide a destination for a user to backup their valued files, in case the data held on their internal storage is lost, or the internal storage fails. But are they lulling users into a false sense of security?They are being offered with ever increasing capacity and at ever decreasing prices. Many are advertised using ‘pence per Gigabyte’ prices as a lure. However a few notes of caution arise from the recent spate of external hard drives being sent for Data Recovery.
- Unlike the internal hard drive in your PC, which is held securely in a rarely moved case, external drives are being carried about from place to place and as a result they get dropped, knocked, crushed.
- External drives are an excellent destination for backing up files, but this only safeguards your data if the files are initially saved to an internal drive and then backed up to the external. If the external drive becomes the default place for files to be saved, the data is not being backed up, it is simply being saved to a destination where it is more likely to be lost.
- Unlike the hard drive in your PC or Laptop, which is cooled by a fan, external drives seldom have cooling fans and, in an effort to make them as small as possible, the hard drive(s) inside rarely have much free air space around them. This can result in overheating.
External drives are an excellent destination for backing up files, but this only safeguards your data if the files are initially saved to an internal drive and then backed up to the external. If the external drive becomes the default place for files to be saved, the data is not being backed up, it is simply being saved to a destination where it is more likely to be lost. The hard drives found inside externals are no less likely to fail than an internal drive. External drives carry extended warranties, this might seem reassuring, however the warranty will only cover repair or replacement of the drive, not the cost of recovering any valuable data stored on it.
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