Portable hard drives provide an amazing solution to a problem that most people have, transferring large amounts of data can be very expensive, most Internet providers can only give you so much bandwidth and if they give you more they will usually increase the monthly charge that you get, this makes it very difficult to backup your data or send large files over your network.

Now, when it comes to the storage in your laptop or desktop you are also very limited, most laptops or desktops do not even have a Terabyte of storage and this can be an issue since most computers will require larger amounts of space to store important Documents, Photos or Music.

I have always been a big fan of having multiple backups of your important data, I always recommend that you keep your files on your computers internal hard drive and I also recommend that you have a cloud based storage solution such as One Drive but I also highly suggest that you buy an external hard drive, this will give you the ability to make regular backups and be able to get access to your important files if your computer were to fail.

Here is a list of things to look for when buying an External Hard Drive

1. Only buy from a well known manufactures – eBay and Amazon have some good deals on External Hard Drives however I have seen over and over people getting scammed, there are a lot of sellers selling external hard drives that do not have the amount of storage that they advertised or the hard drives are defective, I would buy from a source that buys the hard drive directly from the manufacturer like TigerDirect, they buy directly from brand like Western Digital and the offer warranty on all of their hardware.

2. Look for a Solid State Drive – The old days of spinning hard drives are well over, an SSD provides with a tremendous benefit which is speed, they are also very inexpensive and provide good reliability, when looking for an External Hard Drive make sure that you are buying this type and not the old platen drives because you will be able to transfer files very fast, it is worth the small amount of money that you will pay.

3. Get as much hard drive space that you can afford – Many, many times I have purchase an External Hard Drive to find out that I did not buy one big enough, it is very easy to fill out your external hard drive so I would recommend that you buy a hard drive that is at least twice as big as your current computer internal hard drive, right now you can get a 2 Terabyte hard drive for a very affordable amount online and it will last you a while, also think about what future files or documents you’ll need to store., if you have a feeling that you will require way more storage than what it is currently available then investing in multiple external SSD hard drives is not a bad idea.

Your files and documents are very important and keeping a backup of them is key to protect yourself against a hard drive failing on your laptop or desktop, it also provides insurance against other threats like Malware or Ransomware, having a copy of your important document should be a part of your monthly computer maintenance and you will be really happy when you find out that you have a way to recover your data.