Posts Tagged Guide

A Simple Guide To Encrypt External Hard Drive

Posted by in External USB Hard Drives on November 3, 2010

A Simple Guide To Encrypt External Hard Drive

“I have just bought a new 500GB external hard drive that is used to store sensitive files on it. In case the exposure of the important data when it gets lost or stolen, I would like to encrypt my external hard drive. Therefore, the sensitive files on it are well protected and can’t be viewed by others and yet the drive can be moved to another computer and accessed by me.”

The above question is asked by a guy on a forum. Do you have a hard drive at hand and have you ever thought about encrypting your external hard drive? Nowadays as the usage of these small-sized portable devices is getting increased day by day, the incidences of lost and stolen removable devices, like external hard drive, that ultimately lead to data loss and privacy breach often occur. To avoid data loss, improving security of your external hard drive and other USB devices in advance is necessary. An encryption tool which can encrypt external hard drives and other removable devices is an available option for you.

Encryption software allows you to add password to protect your data on USB devices. It can stop any people without correct password from accessing to your confidential on USB removable devices even your devices are lost or stolen. You can find numbers of USB Security software on Google but the point is that you have to select the best among them. Usually good encryption software features 256-bit AES encryption because 256-bit AES is the highest level protection available in data encryption at present. And it is convenient for you to access the encrypted data in any computer even the computer hasn’t installed the security program. Besides, it should be easy to use because some encryption programs are too complicated to be understood by users.

After selecting security software, you can encrypt external hard drives with the encryption software on your own. I would be using Wondershare USB Drive Encryption to encrypt external hard drives and other USB devices. In addition to the features mentioned above, it can also allow you to get more protection to hide your encrypted data by deleting the access to encrypted data. What’s more, the encryption can be finished in 4 simple steps. The following steps and find out how to encrypt external hard drives with Wondershare USB Drive.

Step 1: Download the software from here and install it in your computer following the step-by-step guidance.

Step 2: Insert your external hard drive in computer.
If you have stored files on your hard drive, please remember to backup your files on it. Otherwise you’ll lose your data because it’ll delete all the existed files on the external hard drive to create a secure area on it to store your confidential data.

Step 3:Select your target external hard drive, and set the size of secure area according to your needs, and then click Install to install the program on your external hard drive.

Step 4: Enter your user name and a password for the external hard drive.
The password should be easy to remember but not so common that others will guess the password and gain access to the encrypted external hard drive. Once you forget your password, you’ll never get it back.

After the above steps, your external hard drive is encrypted and prevents users without password to access to the encrypted area on it. To encrypt files on external hard drive, please drag and drop them on the created secure area after opening it by correct password. It is very easy and convenient.

Technorati Tags: Drive, Encrypt, External, Guide, Hard, Simple

Drive, Encrypt, External, Guide, Hard, Simple

No Comments

Guide to Buying Internal Hard Drives

Posted by in External USB Hard Drives on October 19, 2010

by robertnelson

Guide to Buying Internal Hard Drives

Apart from being one of the most essential parts of your computer, hard drive storage is constantly updating, in terms of both capacity of disk space and in physical size. When it comes time to upgrade your disk storage, there are a number of factors for you to take into account. Once you’ve made basic decisions about size, connectivity, speed and data transfer rate, and whether you want an internal drive or external, you can search through Myshopping.com.au to find the most suitable brand, and model, and compare the prices of different vendors.

Hard Drives

How A Hard Drive Works

Your hard drive has a number of magnetized platters connected to a spindle. The spindle spins the platters at a very fast speed while a series of read/write heads scan over them both looking for and writing information. This information is transferred via a cable system, or through a wireless connection to a hard disk controller, which in most systems is built into the motherboard, or in some systems installed as an add-in card. The information that comes from your hard drive through its controller is then made available to the components of your computer. The effectiveness of your hard drive (its performance) depends on how much of its capacity remains unused, how well organised the data is (known as fragmentation) and its data transfer rate, which in turn is dependent on its connection type and the drive’s spin rate.

Internal Hard Drives

Most computers from, the most basic home models up to the most powerful servers, have an internally installed hard drive. Technology today ensures that they are all generally fast, reliable, and offer dependable storage ability. Most modern computers have installation slots and cabling to enable you to install additional hard drive. This allows you to increase your storage capacity without giving up your existing hard drive.

Internal Hard Drives

External Hard Drives

These drives are essentially the same drives as ones installed inside computers, but cased inside a protective, portable case. This is a good solution for people who work remotely and need to transport large amounts of data. If an external hard drive is your choice, make sure your computer is compatible with the interface that the hard drive uses. An add-in card, such as a FireWire card can help to increase your computer’s capabilities. You can compare different brands of external hard drives simply at Myshopping.com.au and search on the connection type, or other specifications.

External Hard drives

Laptop Hard Drives

There have been many advances in miniaturization of hardware components for laptop computing, and hard drive technology is not left out of this loop. Laptop hard drives function in exactly the same way as internal hard drives on other computers, only they are designed to provide maximum storage and efficiency in the smallest possible package. For added flexibility, some laptop computers come with removable hard drives that can be easily installed and removed. However, before you buy a hard drive for your portable computer, check that the hard drive’s specifications will meet the standards of your computer, as many laptop hard drives are proprietary, and are not compatible with other brands and models.

Laptop Hard Drives

Size

Your hard drive stores your operating system, its programs (games and applications), your working data, and your digital music and movies. Most new computer purchases have a minimum of 80 GB of hard disk space; many have considerably more. Hard drive space is one of those things, once you have it, you’ll find ways to fill it soon enough. There is no real rule of thumb, but consider the cost per gigabyte of storage as a way to guide your purchase. If you work with large files, such as music, video and graphics, it pays to have a big storage space for your work. It may pay you to have two hard drives, one that houses all your programs and applications, and another for storing your work and projects.

You may want to compare the price of say a 160GB drive against two separate 80 GB drives. If one drive fails all is not lost. Today’s hard drives however, are fairly robust pieces of equipment and providing they are not abuse, will serve you well for a long period of time.

up to 32 GB Hard Drives

32-64 GB Hard Drives

64-100 GB Hard Drives

100 GB and more Hard Drives

Interface

One key distinguishing factor between hard drives is the way in which they connect to your computer. There are a number of basic types of connection schemes used with hard drives. Each connection type has a range of differences in performance.

IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS)

This is by the most common connection methods. Because the hard drive controller is on the drive itself rather than on the motherboard, it helps to keep costs down. There different IDE standards available. Mostly, you will want to purchase the fastest possible standard that your computer can support. Most computers will support a standard that is faster than what the computer currently supports, so you can buy a faster drive, and update your computer at a later time. The different IDE standards, in order from most basic to fastest, are:

ATA (Basic). Supports up to two hard drives and features a 16-bit interface, handling transfer speeds up to 8.3 MB per second.

ATA-2 or EIDE (Enhanced IDE). Supports transfer speeds up to 13.3 MB per second.

ATA-3. A minor upgrade to ATA-2 and offers transfer speeds up to 16.6 MB per second.

Ultra-ATA (Ultra-DMA, ATA-33 or DMA-33). Dramatic speed improvements, with transfer rates up to 33 MB per second.

ATA-66. A version of ATA that doubles transfer rates up to 66 MB per second.

ATA-100. An upgrade to the ATA standard supporting transfer rates up to 100 MB per second.

ATA-133. Found mostly in AMD-based systems (not supported by Intel), with transfer rates up to 133 MB per second.

IDE / EIDE Hard Drives

Serial ATA Hard Drives

Ultra DMA 100 Hard Drives

SCSI (SMALL COMPUTER SYSTEM INTERFACE)

This is the hard drive interface standard used by many high-end PCs, networks and servers, and Apple Macintosh computers, except for the earliest Macs and the newer iMacs. While some systems support SCSI controllers on their motherboards, most feature a SCSI controller add-in card. SCSI drives are usually faster and more reliable, and the SCSI interface supports the connection of many more drives than IDE. While SCSI drives come in many different standards, many of them are not compatible with one another. So it’s important be know that your computer supports the drive you plan to install. The different SCSI connections are:

SCSI-1. A basic connection using a 25-pin connector, supporting transfer rates up to 4 MB per second.

SCSI-2. Uses a 50-pin connector and supports multiple devices with a transfer rate of 4MB per second.

Wide SCSI. These drives have a wider cable and a 68-pin connection that supports 16-bit data transfers.

Fast SCSI. Uses an 8-bit bus but transfers data at 10 MB Per second.

Fast Wide SCSI. Doubles both the bus (16-bit) and the data transfer rate (20 MB per second).

Ultra SCSI or Ultra Wide SCSI. Uses an 8-bit bus and transfers data at 20 MB per second.

SCSI-3. Features a 16-bit bus and transfers data at 40 MB per second.

Ultra2 SCSI. Uses an 8-bit bus and transfer data at a rate of 40 MB per second.

Wide Ultra2 SCSI. Uses a 16-bit bus and supports data transfer rates of 80 MB per second.

SCSI Hard Drives

Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drives

FIREWIRE

Technorati Tags: Buying, Drives, Guide, Hard, Internal

Buying, Drives, Guide, Hard, Internal

No Comments

Hard Drive Buying Guide: Six Hard Drive Features To Consider Before Buying

Posted by in External USB Hard Drives on October 15, 2010

by stark23x

Hard Drive Buying Guide: Six Hard Drive Features To Consider Before Buying

Buying a hard drive to store and access all your data is a complicated task, especially with large variety available. Yes, you do need a fast, durable and reliable hard disk, but do you know which hard drive has all the specifications that you require?

First, you must know which hard drive to buy – Internal or External. Internal hard drives are the basic drives that go inside your PC and can be used to expand or replace the primary drive. External hard drives on the other hand are portable and work great for sharing data between multiple PCs or for backing up data.

Once you know which type of hard drive you need, consider the following features to know which hard disk is reliable and is best for you to buy.

Capacity: This is the most important feature to consider. You’ll be amazed at how fast a hard drive can fill up. It is always a good idea to know how much extra storage you need for your data and what kind of data you need to store on a hard disk. Hard drives now come with up to 2TB of storage space. Now ask yourself, do you really need that much space? If you’ll be storing lots of videos, music and images then yes. But for storing general documents, a lesser capacity hard disk (250GB-500GB) is enough.

Spin Rate: Spin speed of a hard drive measured in revolutions per minute (rpm) is another important factor to be considered. This is a measure of how fast the platter is spun inside the drive’s casing. Generally, faster the disk spins, faster the data is read, written or transferred. Most common spin rate found in hard drives is 5400 rpm. If you need to transfer huge files, then go for higher spin rate.

Interface: Since interface is used to connect with other components of a PC, you need to choose the drive with an interface that is supported by your PC. Most common interface for internal hard drives is Serial ATA 2.0 (SATA2) and option to use USB, FireWire or eSATA for external hard drives.

Seek/Access Time: Measured in milliseconds, this refers to how fast a drive can find and start reading any piece of data. This is important only if the hard drive has to access small data scattered around the platter. Typically, seek times are in the range of 8-10ms.

Buffer/Cache: This is a small amount of additional memory that acts as a buffer between the system and the hard disk. Frequently accessed data is stored on cache buffer for faster access. More the cache buffer is, faster is the data access. Cache buffer size depends upon the hard drive’s capacity, but typically a hard drive has 16MB to 32MB cache buffer.

Warranty: No matter how safely you treat your hard drive, it will eventually fail. But if it fails within the warranty term you can return and get a new one at no cost. Buy a hard drive that comes with atleast a 3 year warranty.

Following these features beforehand will lead you to the best hard drive that is fast, durable, reliable and fulfills your requirements. Always remember to store your hard disk in a safe place so as to avoid any data loss or hard drive crash.

Guide to Buying Hard Drives

Posted by in External USB Hard Drives on October 5, 2010

by yum9me

Guide to Buying Hard Drives