Please explain to me what an external hard drive is and what it does.

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It's.

Just.

a.


Kidding. It's just a 'storage' device. You plug it into your computers USB port and then you can put tons of files on there rather than your computers hard drive if that is full. You can easily transfer the files from the external hard drive to the computer, etc.
 
I just got my first one and it really is simple enough even for me to use. :)
 
don't bother with the Seagate Expansion drive. My 2TB version is heading back to the store. It constantly disconnects and reconnects itself from the computer.

Looking at getting the Western Digital My Book. or My Book Elite.
 
I have an external HD that I purchased about 2 years ago when I got my MacBook and back then the 250 GB was less than $89. Now the capacities are enormous and at lower prices. The advantages of backing up your content into these devices is priceless.

Great investment.
What type of computer do you have Martha?
 
Martha, I can't remember if you have or use a Mac at home or not. If you do, I highly recommend you first set the external / portable hard drive up on a PC first. Makes it easier to use between both a PC and a Mac. If you set it up / plug it into a Mac first, the Mac formatting makes it considerably more difficult to switch between the two.

I've been bringing one to work with me for years now. I keep my entire music collection on it, so I can use iTunes at work and leave the iPod at home. Pretty handy to have around. I recommend the Western Digital brand, as they're fairly small and easy to haul around.
 
For Mac users...having an external HD as your Time Machine is awesome. It has saved my wife's info after a computer crash at least twice.

BTW--
I've been consistently more happy with the small, portable Western Digital ext. HDs, than any of the bigger, wall-plug types.


Mark
 
^me too. I purchased a 250GB MyBook 5 years ago, and within a year it was dead. It has become the burial place of my Vertigo 2005 photos. :scream:

I've been meaning to take it to one of the mom and pop computer shops near my house to see if they can recover the data. I think the problem is just power, because it won't even turn on.

Since then I've only purchased the portable kind, also from Western Digital. I've dropped them from time to time, although not while running, and they all still work fine. :shrug:
 
Ok, some of you have started to use big words. :crack:

I have a white iMac desktop at home, and a silver, big-ass iMac at work. I have no PC anywhere in my life.

I'm mostly interested in backing up my photos and music. Can I do that and still leave the photos and music on the desktop computer and just use the external drive as a back-up?
 
Yes, definitely. You can put whatever you want on it. :)

I've been toying with the idea of getting one, if nothing else to use as a backup.
 
Yep, back up is what I got mine for. I decided I had too much I didn't want to lose.
 
KhanadaRhodes said:
yeeeees. i have two external drives; one's a time machine, the other is for my music, photos, and videos (music dvds i've ripped).
Click to expand...

I know we've had this discussion before on here. I stopped counting how many external drives I have in total. I currently use 8 between 2 computers, and my wife uses 6 for her 1 computer. Those are just the ones that are still working.

Yes, a big flash drive is a great description.

But, never, NEVER have your info in only one place. If you don't want to take up HD space with duplicate files, at least burn a DVD copy of stuff.
 
At work, I was obsessive about backing things up on our shared folders because I once lost a lot of data. But, I'm horrid when it comes to my Mac. I don't even have that much stuff but I should probably get in the habit of backing up what I do have.
 
i did the same thing anywhere i worked. though one place i worked didn't give me an option, my computer was this little thing that had no hard drive so all i could do was save to my server file thingie. i think that's its technical name.

if only i had the money to buy more hard drives, i'd do a backup of a backup of a backup of a backup. :hmm:
 
I'm usually too lazy to back up what I have on my personal PC until I have it almost full, then I realize the degradation in performance, and so then I get paranoid and I want to back it up. Only now it's trying to back up 200GB worth of data, and I'm not patient enough to wait for the entire back up to finish. So then I'm screwed anyway.

What's a Time Machine for Mac? Is it just a snapshot of your Mac at a certain time (full backup of it) that you can restore in the event of a crash?
 
vjacqb said:
What's a Time Machine for Mac? Is it just a snapshot of your Mac at a certain time (full backup of it) that you can restore in the event of a crash?
Click to expand...

That's exactly it--automatic back-up.

It generally saves every hour, then I think it goes day by day and then week by week as time passes. So, depending on how much data you are saving and how big the HD is, you could have your choice to reset your machine back to earlier in the day or the previous week or a month or two back.

When my wife's Mac crashed, we brought the laptop and Time Machine into the Apple Store with us, they replaced the broken HD, and then we simply chose the last back-up off the Time Machine. It is like nothing really happened other than losing a few hours of time and whatever you might have been working on at the time your computer crashes.
 
An external drive is a bit different than a flash drive/USB "thumb" drive. A flash drive can only be written to so many times. Also they are unreliable when used directly (like plugged in and being opened from/saved to directly). If you use a flash drive you should not use it to backup/store data, it's just a quick means of carrying a few files on the go, and also you should drag and drop from the computer to the drive, not open or save the file directly.

An actual hard drive is different. It functions much better being access directly and being left plugged in. When you have your drive plugged in for a long time, you can hear it sort of shutting off when you're not using it, and spinning back up again when you start to access it.

So, an external hard drive is much BETTER than large flash drive.
 
Liesje said:
An external drive is a bit different than a flash drive/USB "thumb" drive. A flash drive can only be written to so many times. Also they are unreliable when used directly (like plugged in and being opened from/saved to directly). If you use a flash drive you should not use it to backup/store data, it's just a quick means of carrying a few files on the go, and also you should drag and drop from the computer to the drive, not open or save the file directly.

An actual hard drive is different. It functions much better being access directly and being left plugged in. When you have your drive plugged in for a long time, you can hear it sort of shutting off when you're not using it, and spinning back up again when you start to access it.

So, an external hard drive is much BETTER than large flash drive.
Click to expand...

Very good point. It's good to clarify that.

My largest stick drive is 4GB, and I've never come close to filling it because I only use it to move stuff between computers. It seems like their "write" times vary greatly, too. I find SD cards transfer files faster than USB memory sticks. :shrug:
 
I think I need that, Carlos. I have two externals but one is much smaller (80GB) and full so I can't backup my backup anymore. I keep one at home and one locked at work.
 
Yeah, that's a hell of a price for 1.5TB.

When I bought mine, it was a 250 GB for $99...this was 2 years ago.

Btw, that a great place to buy stuff. :up:
 
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