Globalising home computers

In the age of digital photo albums, libraries of MP3s, radio podcasts and movie downloads, a standard PC is hard pushed to keep up with storage demands. Most computers and laptops come with 80GB of disk space, around 50GB of which may be used to stores personal files. A single movie requires upward of 1GB in space. Hence the popularity of external disk drives while have huge storage capacities, allowing important files to be backed up and older files to be archived rather than deleted with each spring clean.

External drives of 1 terabyte (1TB equals 1,000GB) retail on ebay.ie for as little as €138. This will more than suffice for most users.
Computer companies Maxtor and Freecom sell external drives which have a synchronisation button that immediatly backs up selected folders (eg My Documents) with lightning speed. They also allow the back up to be scheduled. Highly recommended for bank officials prone to losing sensitive customer details.

These manufacturers have moved with the wireless revolution to bring external network drives that can also be shared by multiple users. Plug the drive directly into a broadband router at home, and anyone who uses the network can also use the extra disk space and share files (such as music or movie collections). Just as folders can be shared, personal accounts can be set up that allow users to access only certain folders.

It's also possible to access the network drive from outside the home. Broadband providers can designate a static IP address to a home; once this is set up, a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) account can be configured that allows users to logon the external drive from anywhere with an internet connection. Global access to a ‘home' PC.

More information on external network drives :
freecom.com
maxtorsolutions.com
ebay.ie