Remember those old kinds of cameras where you had to buy film? You took it down to your local drug store and had it processed. You picked up the negatives and prints. Then you had to buy a photo album to put the prints in. You may have done away with the film, negatives and photo albums to some degree but you are still stuck coming up with a way to store all these memories.



Fortunately, our computer hard drives are getting bigger all the time. Unfortunately, not everyone has a new hard drive that has lots of storage. Have not fear, there are alternative devices to add to your current computer storage without having to replace the computer or the existing hard drive.

External hard drives have come to the rescue. They are so easy to use. Most of them use a fast USB 2.0 connection from the external hard drive to your PC. We aren't talking about those cute little USB flash drives but actual hard drives. The geeks have even got it right by designing cases that are appealing to the eye. Some even go by the name of My Book and come in different colors. You can set up once of these external drives and not have to hide it because of its looks.

Many of the manufacturers have drives that now offer over 1 terabyte of storage. That is a ton of photos. You can also use the external backup drive to do just that. Created a copy of your current hard drive and still have room to spare.

Some of the digital 1TB ultra slim drives run off the power from the USB but more than likely you will find they need an external power source. You just plug it into the wall. Plug the USB chord into your PC and it should recognize the hard drive. Most of the external drives will come with a CD that has the necessary drivers for the appropriate operating systems. Whether you use Windows or Macs, you can use these hard drives.

The cost of these hard drives have dropped considerably. I can remember what seems like a long time ago get my first PC with a 30 megabyte hard drive. Everyone told me, I would never need more than that. A 30 megabyte hard drive will not even hold the operating systems of today. The cost of the hard drives and memories back then were pretty expensive while today I could purchase a 1 terabyte external hard drive for around $300. Every year, the cost of memory keeps going down.

If you own a digital camera or video camera, you can easily afford to add the necessary memory to your PC to store all those memories. Years from now, you will be able to browse through your collection and relive those precious moments in time.