I recently heard a story of a guy who bought a brand new 1TB external hard drive and copied all the data from his laptop (his entire being) onto the drive. He then proceeded to run a recovery on his laptop to get rid of the years of unnecessary rubbish he'd accumulated over the last 2 years. When it came to transferring his data back onto the laptop from his drive, he realized that the external hard drive was suddenly less responsive than a piece of deadwood! He had lost all the music, movies and work documents he'd accumulated over the years, as well as that photo (the only proof) he'd taken of that cute model he'd kissed 5 years ago before he discovered the joys of drinking beer and subsequently turned into an overweight, wannabee jock, who'd never get a chance like that again.
The fact is that an external portable hard drive is pretty fragile in nature, and considering the huge amounts of information that we carry around on them, it's important that we know and understand a few of the very important Do's and Don'ts when handling this precious cargo. I've compiled a list of the 5 most common things NOT to do with your external hard drive, check it out:
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1. Make sure you use the correct power supply
Probably the number one suspect in the murder of thousands of external hard drives every year. External hard drives are more sensitive than Michael Jackson when it comes to voltage fluctuations. Never use your friend's power cable in cases of emergency, if you do, you'll regret it!
2. Don't clutter things on top or around your drive
This one catches a lot of people out. External hard drives, in fact, computer equipment in general, are allergic to heat. Piling books or clothes on top of a drive causes the air around the drive to be trapped in, eventually resulting in an oven-like effect that simply causes drives to overheat, melt, catch on fire, who knows?
3. Do not leave connected wires in harms way
Whether it's a power cable or simply your USB connection from your external USB hard drive to your PC, make sure that there is absolutely no way anyone can trip over any cables - this could prove disastrous. Either your drive will be knocked off its heightened position and damage itself in its fall to fate, or the sudden removal of the data cable whilst transferring data could result in massive damages to both hard drive and pc alike. Make sure that your connection is Hoff proof; by this I mean: even David Hasselhoff could stumble drunkenly around your house without risk of tripping over any cables.
4. Switch the thing off when you're not using it
External hard drives, unlike laptops and pc's are not made to be left on permanently. Data corruption and overheating come into play when these devices are left on for long periods of time (especially when coupled with point 2 above).
5. Avoid switching use between PC and Mac
This is a silent killer. Not many people know this, but I've experienced it in my lifetime. The constant change of drivers used to transfer data between your external hard drive and the very different PC and Mac machines can result in your data being corrupted. If need be, rather purchase two separate drives to use on the different machines
These 5 small tips could save you massive amounts of regret. There are few things worse than losing all your data from your external hard drive, and although external data recovery is always a possibility, you ideally don't want to end up in that situation. Every professional's external data recovery nightmare!
PS: If you do have photos of you with any celebrity models, back those up in at least 5 different places - something to show the grandchildren!
5 Things Not to Do With Your External Hard Drivesamsung usb cable
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