One of the oft-repeated mantras of protecting digital files stored on computers and other devices is backup, backup, and backup. File backup is highly recommended in case your computer crashes or gets hacked and requires restoring. When you have thousands of digital files in the form of documents, photos, music and whatnot, backing up into a DVD or a USB stick is simply impractical. You will need like 20 DVDs to back up content stored on a modern hard drive. This is where external hard drives come in.
External hard drives are exactly like the hard drive inside your computer. It stores files for future use. The exception is that you can connect the hard drive to your computer via a USB port and backup everything that’s on your computer’s internal hard drive. You can do the same with other gadgets like gaming consoles. External hard drives are also great to unload some of the capacity of your internal hard drive to make it work faster.
You can buy external hard drives in capacities ranging from 100 GB to 4TB. It’s rare for consumer storage drives to go above 4TB. Here is a list of some of the best external storage drives that all modern consumers absolutely must take advantage of: