These types of hard drives use a set of flash memory chips rather than a magnetic platter to store the data. They provide faster data access, lower power consumption, and higher reliability.

However, like any product category, there are some things people should know before buying an external hard drive and some situations where one type of external hard drive is better than another.

Depending upon the age and type of hard drive, the potential failures can be mechanical or electronic so pay attention!

SSD Types While shopping, you’ll generally find yourself faced with a few different SSD types: 2.5-inch SATA SSDs look identical to their hard drive counterparts and tend to be the cheaper options.

A rash of SSD failures have prompted some users to blame a recent Windows Update. Microsoft insist the problem is not its ...

If you want to see how all these types of external hard drives stack up, check out our list of top external hard drives that CNET has reviewed so far in 2010.

QUESTION: What should I be doing to monitor my hard drive? ANSWER: Of all the components that make up your computer, the hard drive should be considered the most important to maintain and monitor ...

A disk partition can be thought of as a division or "part" of a real hard disk drive. Really, it's only a logical separation from the whole drive, but it appears as though the division creates ...

Disk drives of all types are more likely to fail with age. The average age of the hard disk drives in Backblaze’s study was 49.63 months or just over four years old.