How to choose an external hard drive

Many users often won­der: what is an exter­nal hard dri­ve for? This is a large flash dri­ve that con­nects using a USB port. It is large in size, but this draw­back is reduced to zero due to the size of the mem­o­ry. The remov­able screw has high per­for­mance, it is capa­cious, which con­tributes to unload­ing the main hard dri­ve, speed­ing up the work of the screw, and reli­able file stor­age. It is impor­tant to learn what types and types of hard dri­ves are.

Types of external hard drives

Which exter­nal hard dri­ve is bet­ter to choose and buy for a com­put­er? There are sev­er­al types:

• mobile — ide­al for fre­quent car­ry­ing;
• sta­tion­ary — they are con­nect­ed to the soft­ware using a USB port. The weight of the hard dri­ve is a max­i­mum of 2 kg, and the dimen­sions are about the same as those of a lap­top;
• HDD (mag­net­ic). If we talk about clas­sic hard dri­ves, they have quite decent per­for­mance, but are known for their sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to var­i­ous kinds of dam­age;
• SSD (sol­id-state) — such exter­nal mem­o­ry is expen­sive, but very fast and com­pact. It is iden­ti­cal to large flash dri­ves;
• SSHD (sec­ond name — hybrid) is a mag­net­ic hard dri­ve, which was sup­ple­ment­ed with mem­o­ry cells.

Budget and purpose of use

When buy­ing an exter­nal HDD, you first need to decide on the bud­get and tasks that the dri­ve will per­form. So for the usu­al trans­fer of data between dif­fer­ent devices, you do not need spe­cial pow­er and per­for­mance, which will allow you to focus on bud­get options. But when choos­ing a disc for a TV with 4K Ultra HD res­o­lu­tion, sup­port for 3D, HDR or oth­er mod­ern tech­nolo­gies, you should stop at all on fast sol­id-state mod­els. They will cost more, but their speed and reli­a­bil­i­ty are bet­ter than con­ven­tion­al hard dri­ves.

Volume

The mar­ket offers sev­er­al types of mem­o­ry sizes. Today it is dif­fi­cult to find such a size as 512 GB, the stan­dard is the amount of hard dri­ve mem­o­ry of 1 TB. If this amount of mem­o­ry is not enough for the client, then it is worth choos­ing from oth­er options — 2.3 or 4 TB.

Almost always dri­ves are designed for 2.5″. Pre­vi­ous­ly, users could find large dri­ves that had 3.5″ dri­ves, this was the max­i­mum stor­age capac­i­ty of a hard dri­ve. But today they are prac­ti­cal­ly non-exis­tent. They could not hold their posi­tions and can­not com­pete with cur­rent mod­els due to the con­stant need for an addi­tion­al form of nutri­tion, their own size.

Food

Choos­ing a com­pact 2.5‑inch mod­el or a 1.8‑inch solu­tion, you don’t have to wor­ry about this issue. For small devices, no addi­tion­al pow­er is required, because the infor­ma­tion car­ri­er receives it direct­ly through the port through which it is con­nect­ed to a TV, PC or oth­er device. An excep­tion to this rule are dri­ves with a Wi-Fi mod­ule that use a built-in bat­tery. But large 3.5‑inch mod­els are nec­es­sar­i­ly sup­plied with an addi­tion­al pow­er sup­ply, which adds weight and dimen­sions to an already rather big device.

Interface

What does disk inter­face mean? This is the method used to con­nect it to a PC, TV, lap­top. The lat­est ver­sion of USB (3.0) is pop­u­lar among users and is fast and con­ve­nient. It allows you to pro­vide speeds up to 5 GB / s dur­ing the trans­fer of infor­ma­tion.

If we com­pare the inter­face with USB in terms of such an indi­ca­tor as infor­ma­tion trans­fer speed, then only Thun­der­bolt can com­pete, this is the most reli­able exter­nal hard dri­ve. This kind of inter­face is com­pat­i­ble exclu­sive­ly with Mac­Books and guar­an­tees infor­ma­tion exchange at a speed of 10 GB / s. If a per­son works with equip­ment man­u­fac­tured by Apple, then it is bet­ter for him to pur­chase a hard dri­ve with a sim­i­lar inter­face.

Used memory

Let’s decide on the type of mem­o­ry — HDD, or SSD. What is their dif­fer­ence?

HDD

Con­sists of fer­ri­mag­net­ic plates where data is writ­ten. Read­ing is done by mag­net­ic heads. Such devices are afraid of mechan­i­cal shocks and shocks. The dis­tance between the head and the plate is 0.1 microm­e­ter. If it touch­es the plate (dur­ing mechan­i­cal shock), it will break. Such devices are pop­u­lar due to their low cost.

SSD

Flash mem­o­ry is used. There are no mov­ing parts. There­fore, they have a high data trans­fer rate. They are con­ve­nient to car­ry. Despite the lim­it­ed num­ber of rewrit­ing cycles, they have a reserve, so they will work for more than one year.

If you need a mobile dri­ve that is not afraid of shock, and you need high per­for­mance, get an SSD.

Size

The phys­i­cal para­me­ters of the dri­ve depend on the capac­i­ty of the dri­ve. They are:

1. 2.5″ (inch­es) are com­pact devices. The vol­ume is lim­it­ed to five ter­abytes. This is the mobile ver­sion. They are easy to car­ry with­out fear of dam­age. No addi­tion­al pow­er is used for oper­a­tion. It is con­ve­nient to use as an addi­tion­al dri­ve for a mobile PC;

   

1. 3.5″. Up to eight ter­abytes. Desk­top ver­sion.

HDD rotation speed

Mea­sured in rev­o­lu­tions per sec­ond. There are:

1. Qui­et, not high-speed devices with a speed of 5400. Used for data stor­age;
2. Devices with a speed of 7200. Show bal­anced indi­ca­tors;
3. The fastest — 10000.

Cache

It is applied for:

• buffer­ing before read­ing or writ­ing;
• stor­ing reg­u­lar­ly used data (boot record).

Mod­ern dri­ves have between eight and six­ty-four megabytes of mem­o­ry installed. I rec­om­mend buy­ing devices that have at least thir­ty-two megabytes of mem­o­ry installed.

Form Factor

It is impor­tant to under­stand what an exter­nal hard dri­ve con­sists of, as well as what para­me­ters are very impor­tant. Form fac­tor is a type of hard box that affects the device’s mem­o­ry, name­ly its vol­ume. There are sev­er­al options:

• 1.8″ is a portable exter­nal hard dri­ve that is very pop­u­lar. It is com­pact and has nim­ble SSD chips, but can only fit 500 gigs;
• 2.5 ″ — this option is pre­sent­ed on the mar­ket by hybrids and HHD. Here the mem­o­ry is 2 TB, but they do not have enough pow­er from USB;
• 3.5″ are huge dri­ves. They have the largest amount of mem­o­ry, which is equal to 10 TB, but they dif­fer in bulky para­me­ters. In most cas­es, prod­ucts are pre­sent­ed as sta­tion­ary hard dri­ves that need to be con­nect­ed to the net­work.

Types

Today, the most pop­u­lar exter­nal dri­ves are con­ven­tion­al HDDs. In oth­er words, we are talk­ing about clas­sic hard dri­ves, inside of which there are mag­net­ic plates and read­ing heads. Such media are inex­pen­sive, but they require care­ful han­dling, because strong shocks or drops can eas­i­ly dam­age the dri­ve. But SSD or, in oth­er words, sol­id-state dri­ves, such a prob­lem is not ter­ri­ble. At its core, we have an ordi­nary flash dri­ve, but with a large num­ber of chips. The type of mem­o­ry in such devices may vary, but even the sim­plest TLC options can last for many years with­out wear and tear. In this case, accord­ing to the char­ac­ter­is­tics of exter­nal SSD dri­ves, it is much more impor­tant to pay atten­tion to the con­troller, because it is on it that the ser­vice life of the infor­ma­tion car­ri­er pri­mar­i­ly depends.

Availability of additional functions

We now already know the types of hard dri­ves for a com­put­er, now it’s worth under­stand­ing the pos­si­ble addi­tion­al func­tions:

• cool­ing, with­out which mod­els of a sta­tion­ary type can­not be dis­pensed with. Thanks to this func­tion, the dri­ve will not over­heat, and this will help to avoid fur­ther break­downs of the prod­uct;
• shock­proof char­ac­ter­is­tics — there are man­u­fac­tur­ers who guar­an­tee that a good exter­nal hard dri­ve will not break even if it falls from the third floor. There are such mod­els, but their price will be high­er than the rest. We are talk­ing about SSD dri­ves;
• dust and mois­ture pro­tec­tion — this func­tion is pro­vid­ed due to the fact that the hard dri­ve hous­ing is com­plete­ly sealed. You can’t swim with such a hard, but he is able to sur­vive spilled cof­fee.

Good to know

When choos­ing an exter­nal dri­ve, many peo­ple try to fig­ure out which file sys­tem it sup­ports. In fact, it is sim­ply a mat­ter of how data is orga­nized on an infor­ma­tion car­ri­er. There­fore, cheap disk mod­els sup­port all kinds of file sys­tems just as well as expen­sive ones. The choice depends on your oper­at­ing sys­tem, but in most cas­es you will be deal­ing with NTFS or FAT32.

Clipboard size

Buffer size is an impor­tant para­me­ter. It is a built-in mem­o­ry where the most request­ed data is stored. Accord­ing­ly, the larg­er the clip­board (cache), the more infor­ma­tion it can record. Thus, you can enjoy improved sys­tem per­for­mance. For the same pur­pose, for exam­ple, many lap­tops put a sep­a­rate SSD cache.

Protection against moisture and dust

A very use­ful addi­tion for peo­ple lead­ing an active lifestyle is the pro­tec­tion of the infor­ma­tion car­ri­er. Of course, in terms of price-qual­i­ty ratio, exter­nal dri­ves of this class will be infe­ri­or to unpro­tect­ed coun­ter­parts. How­ev­er, any addi­tion­al, but not a mass func­tion increas­es the cost of any thing. As for dri­ves, they can be equipped with pro­tec­tion against mois­ture, dust and even shock. Trav­el­ers or builders may need such oppor­tu­ni­ties.

Software

The last ancil­lary option to look out for is the soft­ware. It is rare, but the ben­e­fits are sig­nif­i­cant. So the appli­ca­tions installed on the dri­ve can pro­tect it from virus­es or unau­tho­rized access. The soft­ware also helps to opti­mize pow­er con­sump­tion and back­up data. How­ev­er, if nec­es­sary, such pro­grams can be found on the net­work both on a paid and free basis.

Conclusion

It is sim­ply impos­si­ble to over­es­ti­mate the ben­e­fits of an exter­nal dri­ve in the mod­ern world. With the help of such a device, you can more con­ve­nient­ly trans­fer and store infor­ma­tion so that you can access it any­where. Teach­ers, stu­dents, busi­ness­men and even own­ers of smart­phones and tablets who like to watch movies on the road can ben­e­fit from infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers of this for­mat. How­ev­er, when choos­ing an exter­nal dri­ve, you need to be espe­cial­ly care­ful, because its con­ve­nience and dura­bil­i­ty depend on the qual­i­ty and capa­bil­i­ties of the device. Our rec­om­men­da­tions will help you choose the ide­al dri­ve that is per­fect for your indi­vid­ual require­ments.

IBM

The New York brand boasts a fair­ly long stay on the mar­ket. It was found­ed back in 1911. But not for longevi­ty, the man­u­fac­tur­er got into the rank­ing of the best. It is in review due to the steady release of excel­lent exter­nal HDDs and stor­age sys­tems.

Key fea­tures of IBM prod­ucts:
The com­pa­ny pro­duces excel­lent addi­tions to servers with embed­ded soft­ware:	this sim­pli­fies the stor­age and recov­ery of infor­ma­tion, pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to receive rec­om­men­da­tions that help opti­mize tasks.
Built-in encryp­tion pro­grams	respon­si­ble for the safe­ty of infor­ma­tion, close access to con­fi­den­tial files.
Sup­port for T10-PI stan­dard	ensures data integri­ty.
Improves per­for­mance on demand	cre­ation of spe­cial options, for exam­ple, Tur­bo Per­for­mance.

HP

This is one of the largest US com­pa­nies in the field of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, which was found­ed in 1939. The man­u­fac­tur­er is famous for its excel­lent com­put­ers, lap­tops and com­po­nents, as well as soft­ware. Exter­nal HDD dri­ves of this brand are also good, oth­er­wise the com­pa­ny sim­ply would not be includ­ed in the review of the best. Sim­ple­Save is one of the most pop­u­lar prod­uct lines.