What Is the Purpose of an External Hard Drive?

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From Quick Guide: External Hard Drive Basics

Summary: The purpose of an external hard drive is to back up files that are on a computer so that the files will be retained if the computer stops working. Back up files on an external hard drive and store the device away with IT help from a software developer in this free video on computers.

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By Dave Andrews
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Dave Andrews is a software developer with a business and Web site selling programs and other computer services in Franklin, Tenn. Having worked in the IT industry for more than 8...read more

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Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dave Andrews. Today I'm going to explain to you what the purpose is of an external hard drive. I have an external hard drive here. It has a USB connector. Now the best thing that you can do with an external hard drive since it's so easy to plug into your computer simply by USB, is you can just take them and store them somewhere on a shelf or in your closet and maybe once a week or once a month, just pull them out, plug them into your computer and make a backup of the files that you're working on on your computer. Then you can unplug them and store them and if your computer dies, you can just pull them back out and there will be all your files that you backed up. I'm going to show a little bit about how to use them. I'm just going to take this USB plug here and plug it into our computer. I'm going to show you how we're going to backup using this device. Now on my screen here, as soon as I plugged in that external hard drive, it pulled up the window for that external hard drive immediately. As you can see, there's no files or folders on it right now. So if I just want to grab a file from my computer, say this is an important document that I've been working on. I'm just going to grab it, pull it over and now it's been copied to that external hard drive. Its basically I'm using it for backup purposes. Now if I unplug this hard drive, I take this and just store it in a closet somewhere, it will be there for a rainy day when I got to restore my files. My name is Dave Andrews and I've just explained to you the purpose of external hard drives."

eHow Article: What Is the Purpose of an External Hard Drive?

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