Introduction
When you are having a computer that is more than one or two years old you might run into disk space trouble. With new digital cameras and HD movies you might run out of hard drive storage pretty fast. Hard drive storage is very important because everyone wants to keep a lot of memories and files on their hard drive. New digital cameras that have 8 megapixels can fill a lot of space because pictures at high quality are larger in size than normal 3.2 megapixel pictures. A lot of hard drive storage can be occupied by MP3 or movies and if you have a TV tuner and you like to record your favorite shows you will run out of hard drive storage pretty soon.
History
There are three ways to increase your hard drive storage and according to your needs you can choose the best way for you. The first and simplest solution is to buy a new hard drive storage unit and this method can be easily applied if you have a desktop computer. Inserting a second hard drive storage unit inside your case is pretty easy and you can do it yourself rather than going to a professional or a computer service. When you choose a second drive you have to make sure that you get enough disk capacity to fulfill your every need. If your second hard drive storage unit has greater performances than your actual hard drive, it is recommended that you reinstall your operating system on your new hard drive storage unit because it will increase your computers overall performance. Internal hard drive storage units are probably the cheapest method to increase your hard drive storage capacity.
Probably the most common method of increasing your hard drive storage capacity is to buy an external hard drive. This is very useful if you have a laptop and you can’t add a second storage unit. Using an USB port you can connect an external hard drive to your computer. If you are using a laptop you can always change your existing hard drive with a new one. Usually laptops don’t have large hard drive storage capabilities but there are several high capacity hard drives available for you to buy and replace your old drive. If you choose to do this backing up your data will be very important.
Features
MAC users can try to increase their hard drive storage by using a Network Attached Storage device. This method is very similar to an external hard drive but you don’t have to connect the drive through USB you can plug it in your router. This method will also allow everyone on the network to use the new hard drive storage unit.
Tips and comments
If you want the best performance for your computer then adding a new internal hard drive storage unit to your computer is the best option. Network drives and external drives are slower then internal drives so if you want more than just a storage unit the best thing to do is to buy a new hard drive storage unit and add it to your computer.