Photo: RambergMediaImages / Flickr

Following in the trails of iOmega, Western Digital and other portable hard drive vendors, Verbatim has unveiled its own USB 3.0 external drive. It’s called the Verbatim Store ‘n Go and will begin shipping soon.

Capacity and specs

The super slick, thin piano-black Verbatim USB 3.0 Store ‘n Go drives will be available in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB (1,000 GB) when they begin shipping next month, November 2010. They’re backwards compatible with USB 2.0 buses, too, so you needn’t fear about not being able to plug it into your older computers.

Other bells and whistles

Vebatim Store ‘n Go will ship with ‘Nero BackItUp and Burn software for Windows’, as well as a 5GB trial of Norton Online Backup. More over, for those who want to be sure their hardware won’t be packing up on them shortly, Verbatim’s 7-year limited warranty applies to this drive, too – but to be fair, do you think 1TB will even be a great deal of space 7 years from now? I don’t. So while you may never use that warranty, it’s certainly nice to have.

The slow charge

As we’ve mentioned previously, every new piece of hardware, whether it is a USB 3.0 laptop, or a USB 3.0 external drive, pushes the updated USB platform forward, and improves its ubiquity. For platform historians, the reality is the universal serial bus platform was not that widespread when the transition was made from 1.0 to 2.0, but with the transition from USB 2.0 to 3.0, the custodians of the platform are finding themselves trying to replace a platform with billions of devices built around it.

Pricing

No simple task, no doubt, but the Verbatim Store ‘n Go USB 3.0 external drive is doing its part. Verbatim has yet to announce the pricing for their new drives, but as soon as we know anything, we’ll let you know.

Our previous experience with Verbatim Store ‘n Go USB 2.0 drives has been good, so we’re looking forward to giving these a whirl when they arrive next month.

Photo: Stock.Xchng

By now, nigh-on everybody knows that just buying a laptop isn’t enough. You need to purchase accessories to both protect your device, as well as extend its usage. Below are our top five most important laptop accessories when buying a new laptop.

A laptop bag

Laptops are too expensive to not purchase protective casing for them. This is fact. A high quality bag is the first laptop accessory you should consider purchasing once you get your shiny new laptops. Fortunately for you, your options are varied.

An external hard drive

Laptop storage is too limited and more at risk than external hard drives. Furthermore external hard drives allow for the transferral of large files between your computer and someone else’s. Tests have also shown that your laptop performs better if its hard drive has room to breathe. The final reason, if you’re still not convinced you should prioritize an external hard drive as a laptop accessory, is you should always back your work up. Data loss isn’t a question of if, it is a question of when, and you don’t want to be caught with your pants down.

Pocket speakers/headphones

Compact USB-based speaker solutions have begun propping up all over the show and have become a must own laptops solution, especially if you use your laptop to view media with other people. If you alone use your laptop, then consider picking up a pair of headphones. The audio experience will almost undoubtedly be superior to that found on the on-board sound system.

3G dongle

Photo: NathanaelB / Flickr

Most people use their laptops on the road these days and need on demand Internet connections, even if a wi-fi network is not immediately available. 3G cards have solved this problem. Do it.

A mouse

The trackpads on laptops are hit-and-miss at best, with some companies consistently knocking the design out the park and others struggling for any sense of consistent brilliance. Save yourself the headache, and buy a mouse. This laptop accessory is particularly handy if you have big hands, or suffer from pain in your hands due to prolonged use, since a mouse let’s you rest your hand in a manner more natural and comfortable than trackpad does.

Taking into consideration practicality and need, these are easily our top five must have laptop accessories everybody should have. Do any of you feel like we’ve left something mission critical out? What would you add to the list?

Photo: Duane Storey / Flickr

You do know that you can boot from a USB drive, right? No? Well, once this guide is done, you will know that you can boot from a USB drive and we’ll go one further by telling you how to do it, too.

What does this entail?

Booting from a USB drive is effectively running your computer off of the OS stored on an external hard drive. When you boot up normally, so to speak, what you do is boot up from the OS stored on your hard drive. Having a USB boot gives you the advantage of allowing you to carry a backup and even a different OS. It also acts a boot for the many laptops and netbooks that ship without disk drives nowadays. In the past it used to be exceptionally complex to perform this install, but below is our simple way to install Windows 7 and other OSes to a drive.

Step 1: Make your drive bootable by installing necessary OS

Microsoft has identified that more and more of the company’s users don’t have disk drives, and have thus developed this easy-to-use Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (there’s a Vista alternative, too). Follow the instructions to install the Windows 7 ISO file to an appropriate USB drive with at least 4GB of space. We recommend you use a USB hard drive, and not a USB flash stick for this purpose. Once installed, unplug your bootable USB drive. (For other operating systems, merely installing an OS to a bootable USB drive is a task itself covered thoroughly over here).

Step 2: Change your BIOS boot order so USB drive comes up first

Now you have to change the order in which your BIOS boots. If it boots via hard drive by default, your computer will completely ignore the option to boot via USB, even if you’ve followed the instructions in step one. When you start up, hitting either del or F2 repeatedly once prompted will take you into the setup menu. This is where you change your Boot order by going to the ‘Boot’ tab listed on your startup screen, and toggling your order to have removable devices come up before your hard drive. The process is straightforward enough once in the setup screen, but if you struggle with finding your way, this lengthy tutorial goes at pains to explain the process. Once that process is complete, shut down your computer.

Step 3: Booting from drive

Now plug in your bootable USB drive while your computer is still off. Start up the computer and wait for the prompt that will let you boot up from an external USB device. The most common message is ‘Press any key to boot from an external drive’. If you press nothing, your computer will boot from whatever is next on your BIOS order – most likely your hard drive.

Viola! The process is difficult to grasp if you don’t follow every step carefully and if you’re not comfortable working in intimidating ‘system screens’. But, in actuality, the performing of the task is simple and straightforward.

Photo: Iomega

Iomega has announced that its external USB 2.0 will soon get the USB 3.0 treatment! And, though you likely still don’t have a USB 3.0-enabled computer – you will eventually – it never killed to be future proof, right? Right!

It’s good for the eGo

Iomega will be replacing every single one of its current USB 2.1 external hard drives with models fitted for the whiz-fast USB 3.0 interface. This will start first with the company’s 500GB eGo drive and its 1TB eGo drive getting the treatment this October. Once the eGotisticals are sorted (sorry, I just can’t help it!) all the other Iomega external hard drives will start receiving attention in the first three months of next year.

Umm, so what will this cost you?

Here’s the unsettling part – Iomega has been non-committal on how it will price these hard drives because the tech firm is unsure how much hard drives will cost come October. Now that you’re a little unsettled, you may settle down once more, with the company promising that you will not be charged a premium for the speed boost. Whew!

What else you should know?

Photo: Iomega

If you’re sitting on the fence about getting any USB 3.0 external drive you may like, get off the fence. Buy it. Why? Well, because USB 2.1 drives support the new standard, only with reduced speeds, of course. Iomega drives are solid, in general, so from a manufacturer profile, they’re worth backing if the external drive has specs that catch your eye.

Iomega drives in general

We were fortunate enough to get a hands-on with the Iomega eGo 500GB USB 3.0 external hard drive. We liked the aesthetic and build quality of the device, but were somewhat surprised that the company opted for a 5400rpm drive in lieu of the faster 7200rpm drive. You can read the full review right here.

Photo: Western Digital

So you’ve just picked up your fancy Western Digital external hard drive and you want it to start putting in work, but it isn’t formatted properly or, even worse, formatted at all, what do you do? Here’s a dead simple guide to formatting an external hard drive using a Mac computer.

First: NTFS, FAT32, and Mac OS X

First things first, it is likely you want your hard drive to work on pretty much any computer you install it, right? Right! So you need to be careful to avoid compatibility issues across platforms by selecting the correct hard drive formatting procedure.

If you format your drive on a Mac OS X without selecting specific settings, only other Macs can read it – as in Windows won’t even see it. If you format your drive on a Windows OS using NTFS, you will have read-write issues on your Mac.

If, however you format your drive on Windows or Mac with FAT32, well you’re sorted – you can read and write data across both major desktop operating system platforms.

How to format your external hard drive using a Mac

Now to the actual hard drive formatting procedure: remember, when formatting a drive, you will lose all the data you may have on their (if any), so make sure to back it up if its important to you.

Now, formatting an external hard drive on the Mac for use on Windows and Mac is a dead simple eight step plan:

Step 1 – Plug in your drive, naturally.

Step 2 – Select Finder > Application > Utilities

Step 3 – Double click the Disk Utility application

Step 4 – Within the Disk Utility app, select the drive you’re formatting in the left hand column

Step 5 – Select the erase tab

Step 6 – Now at the ‘Volume Format’ option, select ‘MS-DOS File System’. This is basically the FAT32 disk type that will let your drive work on both Windows and Mac machines.

Step 7 – You’ll be asked to confirm you’re formatting for both Mac and Windows, followed by an erase prompt. Select that erase prompt. (Warning: this data will be gone if you have not backed it up so make sure to back it up first!)

Step 8 – you’ll be asked to confirm that you really do want to perform the erase procedure. Select the erase button again to affirm that you do want to.

When you know what to do, hard drive formatting isn’t nearly as difficult as it may seem, and we hope this guide has made the process as dead simple as it really is.

Photo: Toshiba

Think about this for a second – 1500 GB of data on one drive. Five years ago 40GB went a long, long, long way and today it’s considered laughable storage for hi-definition media alone that’s about 20+ GB in size. Nevertheless, we look at what to consider when purchasing a 1.5 TB external hard drive and recommend which to go for according to price, quality or a combination of the two.

The basic requirements

Since 1.5 TB drives have a 3.5-inch drive, and usually need to be plugged in, they’ll become an extension of your desktop or laptop storage. This in turn means key files will often be carried on the drive and you’ll need a 7200rpm drive at the very least or run the risk of having a degraded usage experience.

The next big concern is weight and dimensions. Often times these drives are not small and if you ask anybody who’s had experience with the first wave of terabyte drives, they’ll all tell you the size made for an unpleasant user experience unless they were using the drive in a fixed location.

Also give considerable thought to the warranty these drives carry, because as a result of their capacity, moving parts, and heft, we’ve found that 1.5 TB drives are prone to breaking down more often than drives with lesser capacities.

The price quality conundrum

If you’re price sensitive, the trick is always to set a ceiling for yourself and figure out what’s best beneath your price limit. But at the same time you cannot skimp on quality much, because a savings on something that soon becomes a dud is still a waste.

Photo: Western Digital

So you need to find a balance between price and quality by matching the basic requirements above with your price ceiling and product quality by brand if you’re purchasing a 1.5 TB external hard drive. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your many varied options will be whittled down to a small choice range by using this combination.

So who would stay on your radar? Western Digital and Seagate usually emerge tops because of their clever balance of price and capabilities. Both the Western Digital Elements Desktop 1.5 TB and the Seagate External Desktop Drive 1.5 TB fit the billing of quality drives and they can each be had for less than £75 if you search carefully.

If your budget is more flexible, aesthetic concerns and the like can come into play, but on pure value-for-money terms, these two 1.5TB external hard drive options are ahead of the competition.

Photo: Neso

Some companies, like Hitachi, make nigh-on everything, and their Neso external hard drives is yet another field of electronics the company wants to reap some wealth from. Well, how does it fare? The 2.5-inch drives we’re pretty hot for, but the 3.5-inch drives not so much.

Aesthetics

One thing that can be said about the Hitachi Neso external hard drives range, both the 3.5-inch drives and the 2.5-inch drives, is that they’re striking and gorgeous. The charcoal black, clean lines aesthetic of the 3.5-inch drives that plug into the mains contrasted with the almost metallic silver look of the portable 2.5-inch drives stand out from the competition – and each other – by either going extremely conservative or extremely out there. The portable 2.5-inch drive is unbelievably thin, making it very simple to up and leave with a toss into a rucksack on demand.

Size and performance

The 3.5-inch external hard drives are available in 500GB, 640GB and 1TB variations, but, as you would have likely picked up by now, we’re not fans. They run off of mains, which is fine for 1TB drives but not the greatest for 500GB and 640GB drives. Simply put, external hard drives at 500GB and 640GB must be portable and not need to run off mains, making the 3.5-inch Neso external hard drives something of an annoyance.

Photo: Neso

The 2.5-inch portable silver drives run off the USB bus, meaning you do not need mains. Hooray. And they come in 250GB and 500GB versions, too, so at least there’s some room to maneuver for those who want slightly bigger drives that are actually portable.

Extra features

The Neso drives come with two useful features to differentiate themselves from the competition. The first of these features is an encryption software package that protects your data with 128 bit encryption. The second key feature is the Neso syncing utility, which allows you to assign syncing to any folder on your ‘main PC’, so to speak, and once you make changes to files on the equivalent folder on the drive, when plugged in those changes will be applied to your PC folder.

Verdict

These Hitachi Neso external hard drives are neat little devices. And the 2.5-inch sliver-thin silver-slick drives are definitely drool-worthy.

Photo: Marquette La / Flickr

For many of us, all of our work is stored on our computers. Whether it be a simple assignment, an academic thesis, or a research document on the cure for cancer. Simply put, that’s way too much sensitive information in one centralised place. So perform periodic data backup! Please! Thankfully, external hard drives have become affordable enough that backing up your whole hard drive is no longer a challenge.

On top of that, there are clever software solutions for making the process of hard drive backup super simple. Here’s a run-through on how to develop good data protection and backup habits.

Manual backup

If you don’t need to backup your whole hard drive but rather a few files, you can simply backup your data manually. Plug the hard drive in, wait for it to mount, and once mounted, either drag-and-drop the files and folders you want to backup or simply copy paste them. Done.

Automated single file type backup

Photo: LaCie

There are some backup solutions that require you do nothing on your side. The backing up happens automatically. These solutions exist at both hardware and software level. The automatic backup Clickfree external hard drive range is one such example. Plug in the hardware, insert the relevant DVD and the drive will search your hard drive for the relevant files. For example, if all you’re trying to backup are you photos, inserting the photos DVD will find your pictures for you, no matter where you’ve got them on your hard drive, and store them. The same applies for Word documents, and so on. You get it?

Whole hard drive backup

Some computers and operating systems ship with backup solutions pre-installed, which provide the option for data backup when a drive with enough free space is detected. Apple, for example, has Time Machine on its latest OSes, and simply installing an external hard drive with more free space than your internal drive will bring up a prompt to back your whole machine up. It’s a clever, painless solution to insuring data backup happens frequently and you practice good data protection techniques.

Hard drives go bang. It’s more a ‘When will they go bang?’ than a ‘Will they go bang?’ scenario. Don’t be caught without the necessary data protection and data backup habits.

Photo: HP

Leadership woes aside, HP is a colossal company. It’s the biggest technology company in the world by revenues meaning for it to be able to grow at all it needs to have its fingers in many different pots. Not only does HP sell computers, data services, and servers, it also has a range of surprisingly attractive external hard drives.

From simple save

The current HP external HDD range is spearheaded by the HP Simple Save hard drives. Similar to the Clickfree external hard drive range, the HP Simple Save external hard drive lets you backup files with relative ease. Aesthetically it’s straightforward, and capacity-wise it is available in 320GB and 500GB variations for the portable 2.5-inch versions, with 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB versions for the deskbound power-reliant 3.5-inch drives. At 5400rpm, they’re not lightning fast either, and from a software perspective, they work fine but aren’t glitch-free.

This range is competent but not special. The easy backup functionality is fantastic for those who are either badly organised or aren’t confident enough to fiddle with utility settings, but other than that, this is just another portable hard drive range.

And the further you go down the HP external HDD range to the PocketMedia drives that debuted in 2008, the same theme carries through. They work fine if you don’t demand much from an external hard drive, but they could look better and work better, too, if more time was put into them.

How does it fare against the competition?

Photo: HP

While the HP external hard drives range from competent to pretty good, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that others do this slightly better than they do. Samsung hard drives have come up strong in recent years, while the incumbent storage leaders like Western Digital and Lacie have cemented their respective slices of the market.

But what other external hard drive manufacturers do not have is the scale to be able to make rock solid drives like some of the ones HP are shipping at the price tag HP products usually reach. If HP leads volumes, and slashes prices, you could see a similar outcome to what’s happened in the PC market.

Photo: Stock.Xchng

Today’s computers are more personal than ever – they’re used to store many, if not all, important documents and data. Though today’s computing technology is extremely advanced, it is still susceptible to unforeseen damage, accidents, theft, and failure. A reliable backup strategy is essential to ensure that one’s information remains secure and intact.

What to keep

From photos and music to documents and financial records, there are literally thousands of essential files stored on one’s computer at any given time. Experts advise that anything that users create themselves should be backed up – emails, calendars, documents, photos, music, videos, financial documents, and more. Additionally, it’s helpful to create secure copies of the applications used to create such documents and the settings and registration information for each. If and when something happens to one’s primary computer system, crucial files will remain safe with an adequate backup system.

How to keep it

Users should create a backup system that’s easy to use and requires little to no intervention. When considering external storage options, consumers are often bombarded by the sheer number of possibilities. While online backup systems are becoming more popular everyday, these are often not the most reliable due to varying Internet connectivity, and they don’t often provide enough storage capacity to justify the cost. Some may suggest using portable flash drives or optical media (CDs and DVDs), but these are easily susceptible to damage and typically won’t last more than a few years. Additionally, due to their limited capacity, these require that data be spread out over numerous media.

External hard drives provide the best possible option for backing up data. In contrast to onboard hard drives, which undergo changes and stresses almost continuously, external hard drives used for backup are only used during prescribed instances and therefore will last considerably longer than onboard drives.

Big and fast

Photo: Toshiba

Since hard drives sold with most of today’s systems increase in capacity fairly often, it’s wise to purchase an external hard drive that will grow with both your system and your data. A 1.5TB external hard drive will provide more than enough capacity to store all of the average user’s files, and are especially ideal for homes or small offices with multiple systems.

Another factor to consider is hard drive speed. Hard drive speed is rated in revolutions per minute (RPM). A speed of at least 5,400 RPM is more than adequate for the average user, and this is standard on most external hard drives. If necessary, faster RPM speeds of 7,200 which enable faster copying transfer of data between devices are available.

Easy does it

Fortunately, backing up is no longer the arduous task it once was, and a majority of external hard drives offer some sort of automatic backup software. This allows users to simply set up a drive once and forget about it, knowing that all important data will be securely saved. Not only unobtrusive in their use, external hard drives are also designed to blend into one’s existing computer setup, with designs that complement the appearance of almost all computers on the market today. Quiet and reliable, external hard drives stand as the perfect backup solution.

When choosing an external hard drive, users should ensure that it will be compatible with their system. Many external drives are compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems, but there are a select few that are intended for particular platforms.