Why You Need an External Hard Drive
An external hard drive is a portable storage device that you can attach to your PC or laptop by way of a USB or FireWire connection. Hard drives these days can have a large storage capacity and are an important computer accessory for personal or business use. You can find different storage sizes of hard drive from Iomega including 500 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB and 3 TB with FireWire 800 ports. FireWire 800 is a kind of port that you see in newer external hard drives, older iPods, and video cameras. It is a faster version of FireWire 400.
What are the Benefits of an External Hard Drive?
There are two main reasons why you need an external hard drive for your computer or laptop:
- Increased storage: If your laptop or PC has limited storage space, then you can use an external hard drive to save important documents, files, and photos. The drive is easily able to connect into your computer system, so you access files whenever you have the device plugged in, just like they saved on your computer. Many computers these days have an SSD to increase the running speed but cuts back on storage space, so you need to have an external hard drive as well especially if you have a lot of files to keep.
- Data backup: While we'd like to think that our modern computers are extremely reliable, sometimes things can go wrong, and you can potentially lose all data. It is a good idea to backup all your data from time to time on a portable external hard drive and keep it in a safe place separate from your PC or laptop. You can arrange a weekly automatic backup, or you can transfer files over manually yourself.
How Do I Use an Iomega Hard Drive?
To use your hard drive with FW800 connection, simply follow these instructions:
- Step 1: Turn on your computer or laptop and connect the hard drive to the computer using the FireWire 800 cable that comes with. You can find the port on the hard drive enclosure.
- Step 2: Your computer should automatically detect the drive, and open up a new window when it's ready.
- Step 3: You can copy files from your computer by either dragging them into the open drive window, or by doing copy/paste. If you want to delete files from the hard drive, you need to highlight and delete the files, or you can drag files into the trash or recycle bin.
- Step 4: When you have finished, disconnect the drive, and put it in a safe place. Depending on your operating system, there are different ways of disconnecting safely.
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