<p>I'm going to be a freshman in college this fall, and I'm intending to get a hard drive to store important papers and music. What else do people use it for? Are there more heavy-duty uses for an external hard drive that I should be aware of? And what size do you guys recommend?</p>
<p>I use mine to store my photography.</p>
<p>Weigh the amount of files you’re looking to store against the cost of the hard drives.</p>
<p>For me I take lots and lots of photos and own tonnes of music, but still I don’t need the ones that are 400GB because that’s entirely ridiculous for a normal young person.</p>
<p>Unless you are a multimedia major, an 8GB USB flash drive will be more sufficient for every day use.</p>
<p>I plan on buying one soon. I want to use it to store my movies, music, word documents, and photos.</p>
<p>Anyone have any suggestions for a reliable external hard drive? Nothing too big and maybe at least 300GB.</p>
<p>WD passports are nice, small and are USB powered so you dont have an extra plug taken up.</p>
<p>I use it for backup in case my computer is stolen. I back up everything. My external is like 240GB I think and more than sufficient for me, but I don’t download music. My actual computers harddrive is only like 60gb.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the replies, guys. I think I’ll go for one that isn’t more than 320 GB, thought that’s probably still way more than I need. Can you back up software to a hard drive, like Word, and not have to redownload it in case you need to reboot?</p>
<p>Hah, I actually did a lot of research on this because I just bought one myself. I bought a 1 Terrabyte External Hard drive. </p>
<p>As far as I can say:
- They are pretty cheap now
- Bigger in size - far harder to lose than flash drives, which I lose so often (forget in a computer, dropped out of pocket…etc.).
- Good for storing all your music/videos/etc. which can be a pretty large hassle on your computer.
- Backup for your most important files</p>
<p>I will say that external hard drives tend to break on heavy impact but, if you buy a case and try not to let the hard drive fall on the floor - it will be ok. Personally I went with Seagate. I saw really good reviews on Amazon and went to costco and saw a bunch there - around $130, but I had a $90 coupon =).</p>
<p>I have a 1TB iOmega external hard drive. It stores all my movies, photos, mp3’s, ebooks, backs up all my homework, etc., I’ve used 800GB of it already, so it’s clearly useful. I’m thinking of getting a 2TB one soon, so I can backup my external hard drive and still be able to store new data…It’s silly to only have one copy of important data.</p>
<p>Unless you know that you don’t have a lot of movies, then I don’t see why you shouldn’t get a 1TB–they’re down to like 80 bucks (<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Iomega-Prestige-Desktop-External-34275/dp/B001D7REJ4/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1277674858&sr=8-5[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/Iomega-Prestige-Desktop-External-34275/dp/B001D7REJ4/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1277674858&sr=8-5</a>). 320GB is only $20 less, and it gives you 1/3 the storage space. </p>
<p>I guess the only drawback is if you can’t afford the small addition in deskspace that 1TB external takes up…They’re just a tad bigger than a typical 320GB.</p>
<p>And yes, you can backup your entire hard drive on an external. Reboots shouldn’t affect anything unless you’re halfway through a transfer between a computer’s HDD and your external hard drive.</p>
<p>BTW, you were asking about additional uses: large external hard drives are often used by pirates who download lots of movies illegally–especially the new Blu-Ray ones that can take ~5-6GB each.</p>
<p>If you don’t know what else to use for it, I suggest that you may not need one at all.</p>
<p>You could store important papers and music files on a usb flash drive.</p>
<p>It’s pretty nice when a friend wants to watch a tv show or movie that I’ve bought/downloaded and I can just bring my HDD and S-video cord.</p>
<p>I just plug the external HDD into their laptop, connect the laptop to the TV, and I have 1000s of movies available.</p>
<p>You could be the lamest person in the world and people will still want to be your friend ;)</p>
<p>Music, Movies, Photos, Programs, Files, Games, Porn…etc</p>
<p>Wt hell
I don’t have any music files, some photos from my digital camera,50or so gb of games, movies, shows, but I keep all my old school files and stuff.
I have a 320gb internal that is almost about to fill, and i have all my files on an external 320g backed up
i have another external for transferring files and keeping unimportant stuff (no backup on these)</p>
<p>I don’t get how if you’re a photographer / music editor / etc you don’t need TB’s of hard space!</p>
<p>Use it for things that take a lot of space. Namely, movies, videos, and music. I have about 500 gigs filled on my 1 TB.</p>
<p>If you want something portable, get one of the mini USB-powered ones - I think they go up to 500 GB now. They’re very easy to carry around and offer a lot more storage than a flash drive.</p>
<p>If you want one for storage and you don’t need to carry it around, you can get a larger one fairly cheap that has its own power supply. Chances are you won’t need to carry around 500 gigs additional with you anyway. But it’s nice to have a portable one if you want to plug it into different computers.</p>
<p>You’ll definitely want a decent sized flash drive too for storing documents. At least 4 GB or so…they’re only like $10 nowadays. That will give you enough to transfer files easily, especially if working on public computers.</p>
<p>Now, if you have an internal 1 TB hard drive or something, an external might not be as useful. I only have a 320 GB internal.</p>
<p>After having 2 harddrive failures, I use mine for total back-up of my stuff. Came in handy when my laptop went to **** another time, and the only option I was given was to get a new computer (for free). :B Or pay them hundreds of dollars to retrieve my stuff. </p>
<p>Now, if this goes and my laptop goes at the same time, well… that would suck. D:</p>
<p>Definitely get one and use it to backup everything. It’s one of those things where you never need it until you really need it. Even if you just get a small one that’s a couple GB, it will be enough to store any school work/important documents/music etc.</p>
<p>If you have a Mac it comes with a program called Time Machine that automatically writes backups to an external hard drive on a regular basis. There is probably a similar program for Windows if you’re interested.</p>