Portable Hard Disks Their Uses and Flaws

Portable hard disk drives at a first glance appear to be a solution to all your data backup woes. These little devices which have been introduced into the market quite recently seem to have attained the top spot as a data backup utility. It is quite natural that they are marketed as a complete and stress free solution for all the data loss problems that you might encounter.

Advantages of Portable Hard Disk Drives

First, let us have a look at some of the features of these hard drives that make them so popular and then decide whether they are actually as useful as claimed.

• They offer a large storage space, even in excess of 250 GB. This proves to be quite useful for individuals who need to backup large amount of data.


• Even though it is a bit expensive, it proves to be a one time investment for the home users and is generally quite affordable.


• It makes use of USB 2.0 technology and hence offers high transfer rates.


• Also, as the USB ports are now available on all computers, storage of data on them does not require any other hardware as in case of DVDs where they require a DVD burner in order to copy the information. They can just be plugged into a system and used straight away.


• They offer innumerable rewrites which again proves helpful.


• They are small in size and hence, as their name suggests, are indeed portable. You could easily carry it along with you wherever you go.


• These devices proves to be quite a useful means for transfer of data between computers that are not connected to the same network and the data size is too large to be transferred online.


• Also, the data that is stored on them can be retained up to a period of 15 years which generally proves quite sufficient.


• To add to all this, to ease your data backup, some of them now come with software which automatically backs up your data into the portable hard drives when they are plugged into your system.

Disadvantages of Portable Hard Disks

Although, all these advantages make the devices attractive, it is better to understand its disadvantages before you choose to purchase them for your use. In order to help you see both the sides of the story, we have analysed the disadvantages of the device and presented below:

• As they have been derived from the normal hard drives, the portable shares most of the drawbacks of a normal hard drive. For example, similar to your ordinary hard drive, these devices are also highly sensitive to dust. However, they have do have some enhancements in their design to protect them against dust particles.


• Similar to any other storage device, mishandling them may lead to data loss. So one should always be careful while handling them and avoid too dropping them down.


• They are susceptible to external magnetic fields.


• Other than these general disadvantages, some shortcomings also exist in some of the data backup software that comes along with them. The interface employed by them is not user friendly such that inexperienced users might find difficulty using them.


• The noise levels of some of them are quite loud and can prove to be annoying.


• Some hard disks of low quality are also not quite reliable for data storage leading to corruption of data and data loss.


• Since they are portable, it is easy for the employees to misuse the technology and steal official data using these portable hard drives.

The Final Judgement

Even though the portable hard disk drives prove to be quite useful, some inherent faults in them have not yet been overcome. On the other hand, these problems are greatly addressed in the enhanced version of these products. But, as the quality increases, the cost also increases. So, if you do not mind investing a considerable sum of money for purchasing them, they might prove to be useful. Apart from having a long life and rendering satisfactory performance, these devices could be your best companion in saving you during the hard times of unanticipated data loss.