Every computer has a hard drive inside it. This is the brain of the computer, and the place where the operating system and other software is loaded, so the computer can perform tasks. Some computers come with drives which have a high storage capacity, but many smaller capacity drives fill up quickly, and suddenly, you have no more space to store your work or to load more software. Computer users today are managing very large graphics, video, and audio files, much larger than the text files, databases, and graphs we used to store on our hard drives. If your hard drive is full, one option is to erase some of the content, to regain some usable space. This is time consuming, and the decision of what to erase may no be so obvious. Another option is to attach an external hard drive to your computer, either as a supplement to your existing drive, a second drive, or as a storage unit to back-up or copy all or part of what is on your internal drive, in order to then clear some space without losing anything which may end up being important.

The modern external hard drive is modular and portable, and can be used in conjunction with other drives. In fact, you can build a tower of them, if you need that much space. External drives used to be very bulky, heavy, and expensive. Today they are sleek, light, and a fraction of the cost, and they can be secured to the computer if you decide you want to do this, to avoid theft. An external drive is selected by the volume of data it has the capacity to contain, by the type and speed of transfer capability cables and ports it has, and by its dependability. A very cheap hard drives may not be dependable.

PC computers, of the IBM family, have hard drives designed for them. Apple Mac computers use their own brand (Apple) external hard drives. Although it may seem like quite an investment, it is not a good idea to save money on something as important as the storage unit on which you store and protect your work. Digital data needs to be stored and maintained safely, and backing up your work is always recommended. If not because you need additional space, consider getting an external drive to back up your most important files.