Kicking Up Storage For The Home And Office Into Overdrive
Disk drives have increased in capacity quickly, allowing more and more people to store their data. But as the amount of digital information we're creating grows exponentially, traditional storage methods are being pushed to the limits. Cloud storage services like OneDrive help with the overflow but many are looking for ways to kick up their own storage into overdrive.
In this post we'll explore some nifty ways you can take both your home and office storage capacity up a notch or two. Most of the ideas in this post can be done with a few simple tools and household items.
Before we begin, it's also a good idea to examine how storage works. While you might think that you're simply tossing data into your hard drive, your computer is actually keeping track of it in much more complex ways.
Think back to the last time you had some files on a flash drive (if you're young enough maybe it was an external hard drive) and then attempted to copy them over to another computer using the same device. Chances are you encountered an error message that read something like: "The file is too large for this device". This is called fragmentation and is a result of the file's size exceeding the available space on your flash drive.
Fragmentation isn't a problem only for flash drives, though. It also happens when you try to store data in hard drives as they age and get filled up with data. The same thing happens when you delete files from your computer, but now you're losing all that data too.
Like we said, fragmentation isn't good because it means less storage on the drive than is actually available. In general we'd like to minimize fragmentation in order to maximize our storage space, but that comes with some trade offs.
The most obvious is the fact that fragmentation can cause slower (and more expensive) hard drives. The less space on the drive, the harder it is to read and write data. On newer hard drives this isn't a big deal, but with older drives you might notice slow performance now and slower performance in the future.
Another potential problem with increased fragmentation is that it can slow down your computer's boot time. You might not think of your computer booting as being particularly slow, but if you have a small amount of storage available for all your programs you may find yourself chugging to an initial startup very often.
And unless you're very organized, you'll inevitably end up with duplicate files that are scattered across your hard drive. Imagine the time it takes to find and delete these duplicate files! Luckily, most newer file systems handle this problem so we needn't worry about this factor too much.
One more potential problem with increased fragmentation is that it can cause your operating system (OS) to run into problems. This list includes low disk space warnings and slow performance when sorting through files in Windows Explorer or Finder in Mac OS X. It's not a major annoyance but it's something to be aware of nonetheless.
With all this in mind we'll take a look at some of the options you have for strengthening your storage. First up is to find a reliable external hard drive. It can be tempting to buy cheap USB drives when they go on sale, but as they get cheaper they also get less reliable.
In fact, USB drives that are advertised as having "cheap bulk storage" are more prone to failure than those marketed as more reliable high-capacity drives. Make sure to spend a good amount of money on an external hard drive so it doesn't set you back if it fails.
Another option for strengthening your system is to stick an SSD (solid state drive) into your laptop or desktop computer. These drives are small and light, but extremely fast. They're also very fast at data transfers, which is great for those who use a lot of apps, browse the web, or utilize cloud services.
When you purchase an SSD you need to make sure you get the right model for your system. Your SSD should be able to read and write at speeds faster than your existing hard drive. You can find this specs on your manufacturer's website or in the user manual that came with it.
If it won't read or write properly under Windows 8/10 then your SSD might not behave properly when used in Mac OS X, Linux, or another operating system besides Windows 10. In this case you'll want to do a full backup of your OS and data before switching out your drives.
There are external USB-C SSDs that you can buy now, but they aren't optimized yet for Mac OS X and thus are more suitable for Windows 10 users. Be sure to check the specs carefully when purchasing one of these drives.
Another option is to use an external hard drive with a flash drive inside it. There are a few different ways to do this, but one of our favorites is by using SuperDuper's "clone" option which will replicate the contents of your internal hard drive onto an external USB flash drive using the same file system.
Mac users can use this to make a back up of their hard drive in case something goes wrong. It'll cost you some extra storage but will save you from buying a second hard drive if you don't have enough room inside your computer. Windows 10 users can use this to expand their storage when using an SSD so they can place their apps on the external drive and more of their data on the small SSD for fast boot times.
One more option to consider is getting yourself a NAS (network attached storage) system. These are dedicated servers that allow you to change drives as needed and choose how many you'd like instead of settling for a small fixed amount. They're easy to set up and can be controlled remotely.
The most advanced NAS devices even support dual-drive redundancy such as the Synology DS 1815+ which even supports hot-swappable drives. Though the DS 1815+ is expensive, it's a great way to make sure your data stays safe and more importantly, is accessible whenever you need it.
We think that each of these options are good ones for improving your hard drive's performance and reliability so we'll leave it up to you to decide which one is right for you.
cONCLUSION
Hard drives age and, like everything else in a computer, they lose their ability to store data. If you're able to spot your hard drive's age and replace it with a new one, you can greatly improve the performance of your computer.
Next up we'll take a look at network connectivity to see how you can pick up some extra speed by improving your internal network.