<p>Is an external hard drive necessary when purchasing a computer for college? I got a chart of recommended specifications from my school and one of them is a 500GB external hard drive. I'll be getting a MacBook Pro, if that makes any difference.</p>
<p>If you have a cloud-based system of backup that you believe is reliable, that is OK. However, I would really want a backup that I can access if the web access goes down or the online site goes bankrupt. A portable harddrive is cheap enough and easy enough to use that everyone should have one. I actually recommend two hard drives that are regularly updated. That allows one hard drive that never leaves your room, in case your bag gets stolen with the backup drive in it.</p>
<p>Its not necessary, but having an external drive as a backup of files important to you is always a good idea. External backups also become more important when you first experience severe data loss without a backup.</p>
<p>I’d highly recommend putting your own together though. Its just as simple as choosing a reliable hard drive (with the size/form factor you want) and an external enclosure with the matching form factor and support for an I/O your computer (for the macbook pro 1394/firewire 800) and then just assembling it which isn’t very difficult.</p>