Data loss putting your back up? Get a portable hard drive
If your SSD's are getting you in a solid state, read on.
The Portable Hard Drive Advantage by James Walsh
You can find various types of portable hard drives – from external hard drives that store ten to hundreds of gigabytes of data, to tiny flash thumb drives that just have megabytes of memory. So, whether you want to store just some files, or your entire hard disk, you can find the right one for you.
While even the larger sized portable drives (1,500 GB) come under the portable banner, they are not convenient to carry around. The really portable ones have a storage capacity of 10 GB to 200 GB. Portable hard drives are also referred to as Solid State Devices (SSD's).
The Earliest Use of Solid State Devices
Manufacturers of industrial control systems in the late 1970s preferred to store their programmes on SSD's because hard disks were too costly and unable to withstand hostile environments such as factories. And so, Solid State Devices were also employed in military embedded systems. These devices had to deal with vibrations, fluctuations in temperature, and more, which HDD's could not survive. By the time the 1990s came to an end, flash solid state disks had begun to take the place of Hard Disk Drives in most military applications because of their ability to withstand extreme temperatures, their much lower weight, lesser consumption of power, and faster performance.
Advantages of the Portable Hard Drive
The greatest advantage of a portable hard drive lies in its portability, which makes it ideal for travelling businessmen or for vacationers who want to keep in touch with their buddies and store their vacation photos and videos on a reliable medium.
Many users swear by the portable USB 2.0 hard drives as backup solutions. These offer extra storage space, and help keep data safe. What’s more, because these drives have a USB 2.0 interface, they may be used with almost any computer today (most computers come with a USB port).
Portable hard drives are reliable. The technology involved is almost identical to that used for storing data on laptops and portable media players.
Transfer rates have improved considerably. As compared to the earlier USB 1.1, the USB 2.0 is up to 40 times faster. Therefore, you can transfer a large amount of data to a portable hard drive in a very short time.
The solid–state Flash memory used in thumb drives makes your data safer than if stored on HDD or CD. Flash-saved data is estimated to be safe for 10 years or more.
Whereas optical media such as CDs and DVDs may lose their data due to scratches and smudges, these factors don’t affect flash drives, and neither does water. So take them to the beach if you will.
There are no disadvantages as such, except that sometimes users complain about the cables being too short or some units being noisy.
Whether they are big or small, portable drives are easy to use. After you plug the drive into your computer via the USB port, you just transfer the data to it or from it like you do with an internal hard drive. If you have a modern operating system such as Windows XP, you don’t to install a driver, and just have to plug and play. You don’t even need to replace batteries because the USB link itself supplies the power.
Besides the USB, larger portable hard drives often come with a range of connection options including FireWire (IEEE 1394) and SATA. However, you may need to arrange for an additional power source for the larger portables.
The Future of Solid State Devices
Today you will find Solid State Devices used in portable music players such as the iPod, and they will, doubtless, continue as the preferred medium of portable data backup. This is because their USB 2.0 interface and, in the foreseeable future, computers will continue to come with USB ports.
But the future of SSD's, according to the experts, lies in environmentally challenging environments like car entertainment, cell phones, cameras, and navigation systems.
32 MB thumb drives are even replacing the CD-ROM as a storage medium with many organizations using them to send their promotional materials.
The Portable Hard Drive is a device whose time has come.
About The Author
James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. If you are concerned about data loss and would like more information on Data Recovery see www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk
Source: www.articlecube.com
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