Lightweight, Practical, Quick, and easy to under everywhere .. That's why lately many portable external hard drive is selected as the alternative media. No bother, stay connect an external hard drive to a USB port / FireWire into any PC, no need to attach the power supply, you've got extra mobile storage media.
Usually accompanied with a piece of portable hard drive data cable USB / Firewire. Some manufacturers also carry a USB cable with two interfaces (read = plug) USB arranged series to get enough power supply to play a metal disk drives. For this type, you should always plug both the USB interface is currently using the drives.
Some manufacturers also make the sales package bundled with backup software. The function of this software is to recover data when a disaster. There has been no formal comparison of their respective manufacturers stating what software is better than a software one, but the presence of congenital software is quite helpful. Especially for consumers who enable external hard drive as a backup of important files. Sure dong, important data can be annoying if the company who for years was suddenly gone ..
What to Look For?
You can find a variety of brands on the market. There are A-Data, Buffalo, Iomega, Imation, LaCie, Maxtor, Qnap, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba, Transcend, Western Digital and other brands. Each vendor / manufacturer to give the lure a different facility. But one thing is relatively the same, the physical appearance of a portable hard drive is now even more beautiful, petite, with a larger capacity. External hard drive packaged in a form factor (size) 1.8 ", 2.5" and 3.5 ". You can choose according to taste ..
Before deciding to buy a portable hard drive, you should see some things you should look at as a reference for choosing the right disk, create your course:
1. Capacity (maximum file storage capacity)
Portable hard drive storage capacity varies greatly ranging from 40GB to 500GB. But now a portable hard drive has also emerged that the accommodation of up to 1.5 TB (terabytes). If you have a lot of work with video and graphics files, I suggest to choose a portable hard drive with the largest capacity you can buy. But for you who want to get an economical backup media, you need to see a comparison of price and capacity of the drives. The trick is to find the price per 1MB of storage media with a simple formula:
Price per MB = Price: Hard Drive Capacity (in MB)
For example:
Question: How much is the price per-MB for a 160GB hard drive worth Rp690.000:
Answer: The price per MB = 690 000: 160 000 = 4.3125
Here's the calculation that I can create for one brand of external hard disk:
Ukuran___________ | Price Per MB
160 GB___________ | 4.3125
250 GB___________ | 3.2032
320 GB___________ | 2.9575
GB___________ 400 | 2834
GB___________ 500 | 7.2
Usually the bigger hard drive size, the price will be more economical. For the time being relatively economical price is in the range of 500GB to 640GB hard drive.
2. Rotational speed drives
Metal disc rotating speed also affect the speed of hard disk data rate. The faster the power swivel, the faster the data can be written and read. This speed is measured in RPM (rotation per minute). Generally, portable hard drive spinning at a speed of 5400 RPM. You'll be lucky if you find a hard drive with 7200 RPM rotational speed up.
3. Large buffer or cache
The amount represents the amount of buffer memory that is cached. Cache store and handle the queue of requests (request) transfers read / write data from the system.
Buffer size ranging from 2MB - 16MB. The bigger the cache the more 'space queues' reading and writing on my hard drive and the sooner the data is processed. However, the buffer size of a portable hard drive is inversely proportional to the price. The bigger the memory cache will be more expensive the price of these portable hard disk.
4. Recovery Features
If available, choose a portable hard drive comes with backup and recovery features. This feature is useful when your files are damaged or corrupt data or due to virus attack. Through the recovery feature, you'll be able to recover data lost / damaged.
5. Ability PnP (plug and play)
PnP means, more or less could be interpreted, immediately step on the gas pairs. Once you plug the USB cable, a portable hard drive can be used directly without needing to install any drivers or software. Sanga PnP capability helps if you use one or more portable hard drives on multiple PCs simultaneously.
6. Guarantee
People say, reflects the quality of the product warranty. This statement is probably not a hundred percent correct, but the willingness Manufacturer warrants its products can run smoothly without interruption during a specified time period will ensure that consumers no longer feel anxiety for purchase. Average external hard drive memilki one-year warranty, but there are also shorter. Although not the main factor, I suggest you consider the warranty support from the vendor just in case you're out of luck when you buy an external hard drive.
7. Dustproof, Waterproof & shockproof
Hard drive is designed to accept up to approximately vibration 3G (3x the speed of gravity) in silent conditions. But some vendors ensures hard drive can hold up to 5G. Interesting enough, especially when you risk your hard drive is often a fall or bump ..
A number of other vendors to package even the external hard drive with rubber 'protector of all'. With this unique packaging is recognized external hard drive can withstand dust, shock and water (of course with limitations).
Hopefully, this brief review to give some idea to select the appropriate drive. But above all, the choice is always there in your hand .. safely choose
Source: Banded Juwono @ Kompas Tekno
