With internal hard drives reaching more than a terabyte of capacity, people would think there is really no need for an external hard drive. They think external drives cost are rarely used with a computer that has 1000 GB of space to begin with.

An internal hard drive holds everything there is on your personal computer but would you rely on keeping everything on a single drive?

I wouldn’t either, and that’s why I think external hard drives are brilliant.

There’s no need to take the cover off of these little buggers, USB 2.0, 3.0 or firewire lets you access all the data stored on the device.

For everyone who use their computers to store everything in one place, reliable back-up has become mandatory.

Just think about it; you tend to have everything in a digital form only. I know because I don’t keep things in tangible form anymore, either.

From unreproducible family photos to files they need at work the list goes on and on. Would you store all that on one piece of hardware?

A 500gb external hard drive is a really convenient way of backing up data as there is no manual assembly required. You connect it to the power adapter if it comes with one, then connect it to the usb port and find the attached disk volume in your operating system.

Some manufacturers even pack a data backup software with every hard drive they sell, but even if they don’t it’s still really simple to drag and drop folders you need to the external drive.

These drives can easily be used instead of USB thumb drives too, they’re faster, can hold much more data and are just as easily portable. Okay, you’ve got to watch what you knock it against, but you get the point.

A 500gb external hard disk drive can hold up to 120,000 mp3 songs or 110 DVD discs and costs about as much as an internal hard drive.

The average unit costs about $70 to $100 and is easily obtainable through amazon.com or newegg.com