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365 Days of Real Estate & Tech - Day 29 -- External Hard Drive and USB Drive

By
Real Estate Agent with Coldwell Banker Dynasty

  Back in the 80s, hard drive was very expensive and small. Data was saved on the big and thin 5.25 inch floppy disks. The 3.5 inch floppy disk was more sturdy and was about to write on both sides for up to 1.44 MB. These days not many people carry these floppy disks anymore and instead carry these small and lightweight USB thumbdrives that cost about $5 for 4 GB. Imagine one of these little USB can hold more than 2000 floppy disks.

      USB Thumb Drive                 External Hard Drive


  USB Drive versus External Hard Drive

  As our computers comes with larger hard drives, the programs and files also became larger to the point that a USB drive would not be enough for our data. That is where the portable external hard drives come in with about 500 GB for about $100. These external drives are not only light, they also about 100 times bigger than the small USB drives, and most of them can be powered by just connecting to the computer or laptop.


   Which Is Better To Get?

  Here is a question that I heard from many people, "which one to get?". The small USB drive that can fit in a pocket or wear around the neck or the more roomier portable external hard drive, which is bigger and heavier? The problem that I was facing for the last few years was syncing the files from the USB drives to the portable hard drive. I would have to religiously sync them to avoid losing any data.

Hitachi Life Stuio Plus 500GB


  A Hybrid Solution 

  Just last week I stumbled upon a better solution, which is the Hitachi Mobile Life Studio Plus 500GB. It is a cradle that contains a small portable 500 GB hard drive and have a small 4GB USB drive that is constantly synced with the hard drive. This solved all my problems and cost about $100.

Leslie Prest
Leslie Prest, Prest Realty, Sales and Rentals in Payson, AZ - Payson, AZ
Owner, Assoc. Broker, Prest Realty, Payson,

This looks like what I've wanted- I'll look for it. Thanks.

Feb 04, 2011 05:50 AM
Phil Leng
Retired - Kirkland, WA
Phil Leng - Retired

Hi Song,

My current computer has 500 gb. I thought it was plenty until I started doing a video every day (on average)

Soon it was choking. I pulled out my old back up hard drive - 4o gb!

So now we have upped our dropbox limit to 100 gb. That is good for now.

Thanks for the post

Phil

Feb 05, 2011 07:28 PM