When did you get your first external hard drive? In a heavily fortified casing that was as fragile as eggshells it was probably a monster. You may have got an extra forty gigabytes memory for your computer if you were lucky. Although there may be no room for the condom you can carry two hundred gigabytes in your penny pocket in today’s market. Compared to their first incarnation in the 1980’s they are faster, more reliable and a lot cheaper.
An external hard drive is essentially designed to give extra storage. An increasingly popular tool in the mobile age they are connected to your desktop or laptop externally using fire-wire or USB ports. An outer casing gives protection to the hard drive, as they can still be prone to damage from knocks and vibrations. This is essentially due to how they are constructed.
A hard drive consists of a magnetised rotating disk within the hard drive casing that can rotate at a mind-boggling seven thousand rpm. Just like a CD or DVD it is the disks that are prone to damage and decreased performance. Laptop discs tend to be smaller meaning fewer rotations per minute and a decreased performance. These days the capacity of a hard drive is normally quoted in gigabytes or even terabytes, a far cry from the megabyte age of zip and floppy disks. They vary in size but rest assured they are getting much smaller. Mobile storage hard drives and memory sticks have entered the market meaning it has never been easier to take your memory with you.
The end of the external hard drive could be near thanks to flash memory storage that most portable hard drives and memory sticks use. They are still the lowest cost random access re-writable storage solution, which keeps them at the top of the game just now. Probably most at risk from compact flash memory drives are smaller hard drives that cannot quite compete. Many companies are already investing in combining the old school magnetised disks with flash memory capabilities. The future lies in the design of hybrid drives for mass storage capabilities.
It seems as if the external hard drive is here to stay for a little while yet. Although the advance in flash memory portable hard drives and memory sticks probably means they will need to find a new incarnation to continue apace with development. Otherwise they may well go the way of the floppy disk and tape cassette.
Thinking of buying an external hard drive for yourself? You should visit Low Price Memory for a full line of affordable external hard drives, computer memory and bluetooth headsets.
- David Ross
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