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External hard drives used to be expensive luxuries that transferred data between the PC and the drive at a relative snail’s pace.
But thankfully, that has all changed thanks to the proliferation of incredibly fast, yet very inexpensive external USB hard drives.
In fact, prices have now dropped to where you can pick one up starting at around $50!
I now believe that every computer user should own at least one external USB hard drive, for the following reasons:
1 – Backing up of your hard drive – Making frequent backups of your important files is absolutely critical in today’s Internet-centric world, and external USB hard drives are the perfect media for storing those local backups.
Recent versions of Windows make it extremely easy to create system image backups of your PC’s internal hard drive onto an external drive. Apple’s Time Machine utility makes backing up your Mac just as easy.
And trust me, backing up to an external hard drive is a lot more convenient than backing up onto a stack of blank DVDs!
2 – Portability – Like a USB thumb drive, a USB hard drive makes it extremely easy to save photos, videos and other files from your computer and use them with a different computer at any time.
Of course you can do the same thing with a USB flash drive, but an external hard drive allows you to store and share so much more!
3 – Efficiency – Storing most of your files on an external hard drive will keep your computer’s internal hard drive or SSD from getting cluttered up with files that you only use every now and then.
And a less cluttered internal drive means a faster running system and less chance of hard drive failure, corruption of your Windows installation or even the potential loss of your irreplaceable files.
Bottom line: Their historic low prices and incredible flexibility make owning one or more external USB hard drives a true no-brainer.
You can buy inexpensive external USB hard drives at your local electronics retailer or online at Amazon. Click here to check them out!
Bonus tip #1: If your PC isn’t equipped with super-fast USB 3.0 ports, adding them is quite easy, and very inexpensive. This post explains how to do it.
Bonus tip #2: Want to make sure you never miss one of my tips? It’s easy! Just…
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