The external hard disk is still a valuable option
Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta
With a 30 GB hard disk spinning smoothly inside your PC, it is hard to imagine that you will ever outgrow what you already have in there. But, then again, having the flexibility of an external hard disk is not really an extra piece of luxury. Sometimes you may need to transport large volumes of data from one computer to another.
A peer-to-peer network between the two machines, or a DVD writer capable of recording 4.7 GB of data per platter, will solve the problem quite easily. But if neither is available, and we have to transfer gigabytes of files, an external hard disk will serve the purpose well.
A couple of years back we could find simple external cases for hard disks and CD-ROM drivers. These were a cheap solution for those who needed an external hard disk. It usually connects to the host system via the parallel port, though, and therefore the speed would be quite limited. If speed is important, a hard disk cartridge like the SyJet made by SyQuest will serve us better.
An old player in this area is Iomega, which is, unlike SyQuest, still very much around today. For instance, Iomega Jaz is still available today at www.wetmarket.com for US$ 435.00.
One cartridge can hold up to 2 GB of data, and you can buy additional cartridges as your need grows. The external device uses a SCSI interface, but now Iomega will throw a USB adaptor in the box if you buy it.
Castlewood's $199 Orb has also been around in Indonesia for some time. It uses almost the same technology as Iomega Jaz, but it has 200 MB extra storage per cartridge. Now, if 2 or 2.2 GB of removable storage is not enough for you, Iomega has the PeerLess 20 GB external hard disk. It connects to the PC via its USB port, and has a price tag of less than $400.
Maxtor has a similar but more interesting large-capacity external storage. Its $278.25 RA040 uses a 7,200 RPM hard disk and has room for 40 GB of data.
The interesting thing lies in the connection to the host system-PC or Mac, which uses the IEEE 1394 Firewire interface. This allows for a very high data transfer rate, making this external hard disk suitable for video and audio file storage. We can even build a huge library by stacking up to 64 of these storage devices.
If you use a notebook, an interesting solution is IBM's MicroDrive, which can be inserted into its PCMCIA slot with an adapter. MicroDrive first appeared on the market with a 300 MB capacity, but now the 1 GB and 512 MB versions are available.
Taking a full PowerPoint presentation with you will be very simple using this device, but it has been designed for use not only on a notebook but also on digital cameras, PDAs and portable MP3 players. In fact, IBM, Compaq and Tuneln Network have announced that you can now watch full feature films on a MicroDrive equipped iPaq.
Among the cutest of external hard disks is perhaps Pockey Drive (www.pockeydrives.com). It is a very compact external drive package that does not require an extra power adaptor as it draws power directly from the PC's or notebook's USB port. The capacity can be up to 30 GB, depending on the 2.5-inch hard disk that we put in it.
So, although CD-Writers have become commonplace and DVD- Writers have begun to emerge on the market, external hard disks have not died entirely. Their benefits are the speed and their larger storage capacities compared to the CD-ROM and DVD-RAM.