The rising demand for hard drive space
In 1980, the first gigabyte hard drive arrived. It was almost as big as a fridge, but it so many megabytes; more megabytes then anyone could ever need, right?
As time went by, people realized that there is no such thing as enough megabytes. Then they realized that you could never have enough gigabytes. And finally, it got to the point where the mythical terabyte became the standard unit of storage.
That’s the way it is with hard drive space. What’s considered too much now will be the standard in every computer in a few years, and scoffed at a few years later.
Multimedia and social media, all the video and image files people store on their computers and upload to social media sites, all contributing to the rising demand for data storage. Facebook alone processes about 500 Terabytes worth of data per day, while 72 hours’ worth of video footage is uploaded to YouTube every minute.
External hard drives: More portability for less reliability?
The space requirements of data are higher and so is its value, whether it is photos of a fondly remembered trip or important business data. The prevalence of viruses and hacking means people not only need additional storage space, but a means to backup all this information and protect it from threats. This is why external hard drives have become one of the fastest-growing data storage mediums.
They provide additional storage space that can be installed without having to open the computer case. It’s just a simple matter of plugging it in, usually via USB cable, and hundreds of additional gigabytes are yours to deploy. When it comes to protecting that data from online threats, it’s just a simple matter of unplugging the same cable, unlike internal hard drives which are accessible for as long as the computer is on.
Furthermore, external hard drives provide extra storage that is also portable. You may not be able to carry them around in your pocket as easily as USBs, but the far superior storage capacity more than makes up for the inferior portability.
For all their benefits, external hard drives are not the most reliable of devices. Internal hard drives are quite prone to failure as is, and external drives don’t even have the benefit of being close to the computer fans, which means that there is no cooling mechanism to protect them from excess heat.
What’s more, being positioned outside the case means they’re more exposed to the elements, and to the threat of physical trauma, especially when cables are unwisely left to trail in places where they can easily be caught on someone’s foot.
Data should only be considered “backed up” if it’s contained on an internal drive as well as an external drive. On the plus side, the portability of external hard drives makes it easier to transport them to a data recovery center should they fail.