Recently I bought an external hard drive by Western Digital which is extremely easy to use and worth the money. I bought the model that was 160GB which is more than enough to store my files, backups and music collection. More than the size though, I really like the ease of use.
Traveling on the train and working for clients, I often find myself looking for ways to transport increasing amounts of data about the projects I’m working on and the portable hard drive works for this purpose quite nicely. The higher capacity makes it superior to the flash drives out there and the fact that it is entirely powered via the USB cable means that I am able to get it powered without worrying about where to plug in an AC adapter.
The bottom line for many people is that if you are more than an occasional user, a portable hard drive should be high on your list in terms of items to get soon. They are quite cheap as the prices on technology continue to come down. Some can be had brand new for around 80 dollars. This is a great value when compared with the price of storage just a few short years ago.
For the average home user with a drive like this one, backing up files is a matter of drag and drop; there’s no need for special products/software/configuration. Furthermore, the backups can be used anywhere and are easy to retrieve. Using other solutions often means compression, special files, and sometimes even storage via the Internet. I like the approach of an external hard drive because of its portability.
