Media Files

• Move your largest files to a directory on your external hard drive to free valuable space on your main hard drive. Video, audio and digital photo files can quickly consume massive amounts of hard drive space. You are not likely to use any of these files daily, so moving them to an external drive makes sense. You will not see any significant delays when your software accesses and loads digital content. Once you point your media player and graphics software to the correct directory on the external drive, continue to use that directory as you acquire new files.
  
  

Email and Document Archives

• With capacities that range from a few hundred gigabytes to over a terabyte, external hard drives are easily worth your investment. Use your external hard drive to archive email messages and reference documents too. If you dislike sifting through thousands of accumulated emails or documents that you have saved, copy your older files quarterly or annually to a folder on an external drive. File your archived data by topic or create dated folders for each year or another time period that makes sense to you. Once you successfully implement this system, delete your reference documents and emails from your primary hard drive. If you do not use Outlook for email, consult the help menu in your email client for the appropriate archive and export procedures.
  
  

Backups

• Use an external hard drive to backup your software programs and your documents. Although it can be quite complicated to get Windows to create backups on an external drive, many of the most popular ones come with the option to make full and incremental backups of the files on your main hard drive. This is less time-consuming than backing up your important files to flash drives or CDs. Backups to external hard drives take less time because your computer will write data to them much faster than to a USB port or a CD. If your drive has a backup option, you can schedule your backups to run while the computer is idle. You will not have to remember to complete regular backups or worry about having enough CDs on hand.