External hard disks for backups,
here are eight reasons, they're really your best option.
Hi Everyone. Leo Notenboom for Askleo.com. Backing up is something we talk about
often, and external hard drives are something that I recommend frequently.
I want to throw out some of the reasons
that I think they are one of the best options.
The first thing I turn to whenever I talk about backing up
first, they're simple.
You get one, you attach a cable and you plug it in.
It's almost the definition of plug and play.
Many of them don't even require
an additional power supply, although those that do, it's still pretty simple.
You plug that into and things just work.
They're inexpensive.
Hard disks have become less expensive.
And we're talking about regular old
rotating magnetic media hard disks for these external drives.
They are inexpensive and you can get
a fair amount of capacity for not a lot of money.
Speaking of which, they're big.
The smallest one I could find with a quick search on Amazon was about a terabyte.
I'm sure they're smaller ones out there,
but a terabyte as a starting point is just amazing.
Many of us don't have anywhere near that kind of data on our machines.
The result is that a quote unquote, small external hard drive of only
a terabyte is usually, well, sufficient for our needs there fast enough.
Now, I say that because we often think of disk speed.
In fact, it's one of the reasons we talk
about using SSD for internal drives all the time.
They can make a dramatic impact in your performance, your day to day usage.
But for external hard drives, you don't need that for backing up.
You just don't need all that extra speed.
Now, as it turns out, with modern interfaces like USB three
and better and modern hard disks, things are actually pretty darn fast anyway.
I have used external hard drives as
production, hard drives, actually doing work on them.
But the bottom line is that for backing up
a process that is usually happening quietly and continuously
in the background, speed isn't really that big an issue.
And that means that these slower,
less expensive drives are perfect for what we need.
They're everywhere.
It's hard not to run into external hard drives.
Sure. Of course.
My go to place is usually Amazon,
but you'll find them at big box stores, at department stores, at heck.
I wouldn't be surprised if you found them at a big enough grocery store.
They are that common.
They're reusable.
This is something I think that's overlooked.
Machines last for a certain amount of time.
I get that.
And they're usually replaced, not because they've broken,
although that happens to, but because they're not up to current tasks.
A ten year old machine just isn't quite
capable of doing what we expect a machine to do today.
On the other hand, those external drives that you got ten years ago,
there's a good chance that they are still very valuable, very useful for backing up,
for archiving, for any number of different things.
They are what backup software expects when
you get software, either with your external drive or any
of the recommended tools that I've talked about or even Windows own internal backup
tool, they all assume an external drive attached to your machine.
Yep, they may be able to be configured
for other things, but they assume and in fact are optimized
for working with an external drive as the target of their backup.
They work without a network.
This is one of those things that I think
a lot of people overlook, especially when it comes to backing up to the cloud.
Well, to back up to the cloud, you have to have a connection.
You may not have one.
Maybe you're traveling.
Maybe there's a problem.
An external drive continuously connected to your machine is always there.
It's always fast and it always just works.
Those are just a few of the reasons I've probably overlooked a few that make
external drives a compelling option for getting your backups done.
If you don't have one, I strongly recommend you get one.
And if you're not already backing up,
start backing up to that external drive right away.
I hope that was helpful.
I hope that convinced you to get
an external drive if you don't have one already for Linux related to this article,
for updates, for comments and more, visit askleo.com/131457.
I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is Askleo.com.Thanks for watching.