Internal External Hard Drives the Specifics

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Internal - External Hard Drives the Specifics

There are many type of hard drives to fit anybody means. Before, it was rather simple, you had a choice of an internal hard-drive or an internal hard-drive. Not much of a choice right? Now you have a variety of options, internal hard drives, external hard drives or USB Thumb Drives. A much wider selection is now available to fit everyone's needs. Below you'll find an overview of the difference drives available, and a quick tutorial on ways to secure your hard drive if you should want to sell your computer.

High Capacity USB Thumb/Flash Drives

The USB flash drive is small and compact, fitting neatly in your hand, pocket, or even can allow you to attach it to a key ring. They connect to your hard drive by way of a USB port, with the ability to write and copy data from an internal memory chip. To use it as an external hard drive, all you need to do is insert it into the USB port, and then drag and drop data from or to the thumb/flash drive.

Differences in Flash Drives

The differences in flash drives is determined by such features as: USB connectivity (1.1 or 2.0) and it's appearance (size, shape, and color).

The USB Thumb Drive is perfect for backups, storing data, music (look at the MP3 flash drive), photos, and digital files. Though the cost per GB is still high, their convenience in size, interface, and mobility offers a quick solution for storing data offline.

One additional benefit, these mobile wonders can last up to 10 years.

External Hard Drives

External hard drives prices are reasonable and ever expanding in price. For example 1TB(Terabyte) can be bought at less than $200. They have interfaces available in the following: USB (slow), Firewire (medium), and the SATA/eSATA (fast).

External Hard Drive Interface differences

A USB is a great solution for a laptop, if it only has USB ports. If you have a USB port and Firewire, go with the Firewire because it gives you a better performance boost. (Firewire defined: A firewire is a standard interface that is used to connect hard drives and cameras to a computer. They come in two speeds- The common Firewire 400 which runs at 400Mbps and for the high end machines there is the Firewire 800.)

However, if you have an SATA/eSATA port, a hard drive with this technology gives you a true hard drive to hard drive performance.

Internal Hard Drives

There are many different brands on Internal hard drives. Here is a sampling of some of the top of the line internal hard drives available:

Western Digital Caviar

Seagate Barracuda-great drive for storing large media collections

Capacity is important. Why? I'm currently not seeing any of the software makers making a concerted effort at containing the size of their programs. Which means, new programs will take up more space. So I would suggest that you get as much hard drive storage space as your pocketbook can handle.

Secure Erase of Your Hard Drive

Securely erasing your hard drive is always an issue, if you are wanting to get rid of your computer. There are several options for your PC or Mac. I'll explain each.

Erasing Your Hard Drive on a Mac

To erase everything on your Mac hard drive was easily addressed by Apple. If you are running Tiger or Leopard on your Mac you can do the following:

1. Launch Disk Utility(Applications)/Utilities
2. Select the drive you want to erase
3. Click the erase tab
4. Click the Security Options button
5. Under the Security Options button you'll see four options appear:

Don't Erase Data-wipes out the directory that tell Mac where your data is.
Zero Out Data - writes zeros over you drive one time.
7-Pass Erase-meets US Department of Defense standard. It writes over your data seven times.
35-Pass Erase - If you want all your data gone, than the 35-Pass Erase will do the trick. It will write junk over your drive 35 times.

Erasing Your Hard Drive on a PC

There are different methods in which you can securely erase the data on your PC hard drive.

1. You can reformat the hard drive and re-install the operating system. This wipes out everything on the hard drive. Why do both? If you only reformat the hard drive you may still have index files that tell you where things are stored on the hard drive.

2. Buy software and overwrite the disk, again and again and again. Here are several programs you can look at to get the job done.

Norton Systemworks has an application called "Wipe Info" that will overwrite the disk.
OnTrack's Data Eraser

These programs are designed so you can overwrite everything or just the programs you want. But be forewarned, this process is slow because they write to the disk repeatedly.

If you want to make sure no one gets your personal data, you can destroy the hard drive. Smash it with a hammer or shred it, so none of your personal information gets in the wrong hands.

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