In my opinion, one of the most useful pieces of hardware you can add to your home computer is an external hard drive. In the past, hard drives were relatively expensive, and external models would virtually break the proverbial bank. And even if you could afford one, getting it hooked up to your PC and working correctly was a task that few home computer owners had enough expertise and patience to accomplish. But today, those drawbacks have pretty much evaporated.
Like most other computer components, the prices of hard drives have dropped to rock bottom, and for around $100 or so you can purchase a 1 Terabyte external drive and have it working in a matter of minutes by simply plugging it into an open USB port. These little gems are plug-and-play devices, and they work very, very well.
So what can you do with an external hard drive? Well, for starters, it will make it extremely easy to back up the data on your computer’s internal hard drive. Make no mistake about it, the hard disk in your PC or MAC WILL fail some day, and when it does, if you don’t have a current backup of your files, they’ll all be gone. Just think about having thousands of pictures, MP3′s, videos, emails and other precious files lost forever due to a hard drive crash!
Another benefit of an external hard drive is the ease with which you can share files with other computer users in your home. Simply copy as many files as you like onto the external drive, then connect it to another computer for instant access to all of those files. Better still, you can connect the drive directly to a wireless router that has a built-in USB port and everyone in the house can access the drive at the same time!
As low as their prices have fallen and as easy as they are to install nowadays, it really makes sense to add an external hard drive to your computer or router. One you’ve used it for a while, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.