EXTERNAL HARD DISK DRIVES
Seagate External Hard Drives
My favorite external hard drives are those from Seagate. What I like most about Seagate's drives is their form factor. These 3.5'' drives are compact and lightweight; you can position them vertically or lay them horizontally. And if you go the horizontal route, they're stackable! Backing up your hard drive is literally a pushbutton operation. You can initiate a backup by pressing the big button on the front of the unit, or by using the included BounceBack Express software. The software also lets you schedule automatic backups on any schedule you devise. Performance-wise, we're talking 7200 rpm with an 8MB cache, and they connect via either USB 2.0 or FireWire. Seagate is even nice enough to include both USB and FireWire cables in the box a nice touch you won't find from all manufacturers. Even better, Seagate offers capacities up to 400GB one of the largest external drives on the market today. All the drives are hot-swappable, of course. Seagate's hard drives are also very quiet, which makes them good choices as backup for a Media Center PC. The 400GB model can hold more than 100,000 JPG photos, 6,500 hours of digital music, or 400 hours of digital video more than enough for most needs. I have one in my home theater system, tucked quietly out of the way, making nightly backups of all my digital music. It does its job so well, I don't even know it's there.
Maxtor OneTouch IIAnother good one-button backup drive is Maxtor's OneTouch II. In addition to pushbutton backups, automatic backups can be scheduled via the included Dantz Retrospect Express software. Performance-wise, the OneTouch II is extremely fast; it functions at 7200 rpm (with a 16MB cache), for an average seek time of less than 9 ms. Maxtor offers four different OneTouch II models, with either USB or USB/FireWire connectivity, in capacities from 100GB to 300GB.
Western Digital Dual-Option Media CenterWhat makes Western Digital's Media Center unique is that it's more than just a backup device; it also functions as an 8-in-1 digital media reader, two-port USB hub, and two-port FireWire hub. Use it to download your latest digital photos via memory card or to connect other USB peripherals. It connects to your PC via either USB 2.0 or FireWire and offers 250GB of capacity. The drive itself has a rotational speed of 7200 rpm, with an 8MB cache, and can be positioned either vertically or horizontally.
LaCie 2 Terrabyte Bigger Disk ExtremeIf you're storing lots of digital movies or thousands of CDs (in lossless format), you need more capacity than a typical external hard disk can provide. For you storage hounds, LaCie offers the Bigger Disk Extreme, a one-box solution containing multiple hard disks in a RAID array. Capacity is truly humongous; the Big Disk Extreme comes in 1 terrabyte, 1.6 terrabyte, and 2 terrabyte versions, all with high-speed FireWire 400 and 800 connections. Yowsers, these are big disks!
Buffalo TeraStation Network Attached Storage DriveYou don't have to connect your external storage to a single computer; if you have a whole-house network, you can use a single network-attached storage drive to back up all the PCs on your network. Buffalo's TeraStation NAS is easy to set up and practically invisible when in use, and it comes in three extra-large capacities, with either 0.6 terrabytes (600MB), 1.0 terrabytes (1,000MB), or 1.6 terrabytes (1,600MB) of storage.
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EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 126