Drive It Outside the Box: How to Use External Drives

External hard drives: What are they? How do they work? Why should you use them? And, which one should you use? Let's jump right in and find out more about these devices.

What Is It?

An external hard drive is considered an accessory or a peripheral piece of computer equipment. Generally speaking, a hard drive is the place where all of your files are stored. This may be on your desktop computer or notebook computer. All computer systems come with some sort of hard drive already installed. An external hard drive is then an optional drive, which can connect to your desktop or notebook PC. These drives may take the form of a small, flat box or they may be small, "jump-type" drives that you can carry on your keychain.

How Do They Work?

An external hard drive typically connects to your computer in the USB port. Also, it may have a small cord running from the drive or it may plug directly into the drive without a cord. These drives function similarly to your internal hard drives except you must tell your computer to send or save files to that drive, instead of to the default hard drive, which is usually on your C: drive. Once plugged in, these drives and their file contents can be accessed by opening My Computer and double-clicking on the external drive.

• Go to your Start menu and right-click on My Computer.
• Click on Explore. There, you'll see your Local Disc (C:). The external drive may be found with the corresponding drive letter thereafter.

Why and How to Use Them?

The primary reasons to use an external drive are to back up your data and to save space on your internal hard drive. However, an obvious word to the wise: Never trust your external drive as your single source of data-storage information. While these handy little gadgets have allowed us to free up internal hard-drive space and to hold backup data should our systems crash, they are still just that - little gadgets.

As such, they can become lost, damaged or simply stop working. The worst feeling in the world is when you plug in your external drive, only to find that it's "not found" or contains no data...with those having been your only file copies. Not a happy day. Instead, use them to back up your important files or to store very large files that you would rather not have on your internal hard drive, such as photos or videos.

Just make sure you save it in more than one place or on more than one external-type hard drive. Because these drives can hold robust amounts of data, they can be used to transfer loads of information from one computer to another.

To copy a file from your local drive to your external drive:

• Go to your desktop and right-click on My Computer.
• Click on Explore. Go to My Documents or otherwise locate the files you've saved on the local C: drive. If you're copying a file from the local drive to the external drive, right-click on it and choose Copy.
• Find the external drive, right-click on it, and click Paste.
• To move a file from your local drive to the external drive, follow the above process, except choose Cut and then Paste.

What to Look For?

When shopping for an external drive, first consider how you'll use it. Will you be backing up massive amounts of data on a daily basis? If so, you may want to go with a high-capacity external drive, such as the Apricorn EZ Bus Desktop External 500GB Hard Drive, available for about $115. If you simply want to send copies of Microsoft® Word documents somewhere, consider a "flash" or "jump" drive - a smaller external drive, such as the SanDisk 8GB Cruzer Micro U3 USB Drive, available for around $40.

Don't let your unfamiliarity with external hard drives stop you from reaping their benefits. Pick one up today, plug it in, and see what it can do for you!