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We make buying a hard drive easy. Through our hard drive buying guide you'll get a crash course regarding everything you need to know to increase your storage space and backup all your computer documents.

Hard Drive Buying Guide

Before You Shop Storage

  • Figure out how much data you need to back up.
  • If you're the type of person who only writes in Word documents and Excel files, there's no need to spend a lot of money on a huge external hard drive with several hundreds of gigs of storage space. If, however, you're someone who takes a lot of digital pictures or captures digital video and finds the hard drive on your computer filling up quickly, look into getting an external hard drive with at least 100GB of storage space. The current going price is about one dollar per gigabyte, so a 100GB hard drive will cost you a very reasonable $100.

    Whichever type of user you are, getting some system to back up your work is essential. While it's rare that a hard drive on a computer will fail completely and fry all your documents and digital memories, it does happen and you should be prepared. Regularly backing up your hard drive is even more critical if you have a laptop since there is always a chance it will get stolen or damaged in transit.

  • Do you want an external hard drive, a portable hard drive, or a DVD burner?
  • There are lots of options out there for backing up your work and the key is to find out which system works best for you so that regularly archiving your files becomes a part of your routine.

    For users who don't think they'll be taking their digital archive off their desk, go for an external hard drive. They're very reliable and give you good bang for your buck in terms of storage space. If you plan to take your digital storage on the road with you once in a while, a portable hard drive is a great option and gives you fairly decent room to back up. If, however, you think you'll be frequently transferring just small bits of data, a USB thumb drive is a great, inexpensive choice.

    Finally, if you're comfortable with burning CDs or DVD regularly to archive your work, CD and DVD burners are very reasonably priced these days.

  • Does your household need a home server?
  • A good way for your entire household to back up to one place is through a home server. Known more formally as a network-attached storage device (NAS), a NAS home server lets you network in multiple computers and multiple users to store data and information in one place from several locations.

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