Best 2TB External Hard Drive

No matter how much you buy, you always need it more. Ah well, what am I talking about? Yeah, you guessed it right, we are talking about hard drive storage space. No matter how many gigabytes you start with, you are ultimately going to have only a few mega bytes left! Ergo, the solution is to buy more space in the form of an external hard drive. While you are at it, why not go for the roomiest drive of them all, which is a 2 Terabyte external hard drive! That's right, 2000 Gigabytes of digital storage space to stack away all your music, videos, photos, movies and personal documents. In this Buzzle article, I review the best 2TB external hard drives available in the market.

Choosing an External Hard Drive

Here is a quick external hard drive buying guide, for those of you who are making a first time purchase. Besides the primary feature of size storage space offered, check out the RPM speed of the drive, which determines the rate at which data transfer occurs. Higher the RPM speed, faster is the drive at transferring data. Look for a high buffer cache size as it allows the drive to temporarily store data, when data transfer is in progress, improving overall data transmission speed. Other than these features, the most important thing is the type of interface its equipped with for data transfers. The fastest interface right now is eSATA, followed by FireWire and USB 2.0. The soon to be released USB 3.0 interface will surpass the eSATA in terms of speed. If you plan to use the drive as a server backup, look for built in RAID system compatibility and security tools. Now that you know what to look out for when buying external hard drives, you are ready to check out the top products reviewed in the next section.

Best 2TB External Hard Drive: Reviews

All the major hard drive manufacturers, including Seagate, Western Digital and Iomega have 2 TB external hard drives, as their high-end line of products. In this article, I have primarily reviewed external hard drives for desktop computers. Of course, you might use them with laptop computers also. Only they tend to be slightly bulky compared to the ones designed specifically for laptops. Here are the top four 2 TB external hard drives you could choose from.

Western Digital WD Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
This is a product that has been rated very highly in all the external hard drive reviews presented all over the web. With a price tag of $104.99, the Western Digital WD Elements 2TB external hard drive offers a phenomenal data transfer speed of 480 Mbps! It comes with a high speed USB 2.0 data transfer interface, which can be connected with your desktop's USB port using a special cable. If you are looking for the best external hard drive for Mac, this should be your first choice!

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk (2TB)
The Seagate product which offers competition to the Western Digital drive reviewed above is the Seagate FreeAgent Go Flex. Even with 2 TB of capacity, 5900 RPM drive revolution speed, 32 MB of cache buffer this Seagate disk will only cost you about $109.99 on Amazon.

Iomega eGo 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive
This Iomega product offers you 2 TB of storage space at a price tag of about a $100 with decent data transfer speeds, along with a solid 3 year warranty. It comes with a Iomega security protection suit that has tools which enable you to secure your store data. A simple, yet sleek design and excellent overall performance makes it one of the best external hard drives that you could buy.

LaCie 2big Quadra
If you are looking for the most sophisticated and speediest of external hard drives, the Lacie 2big Quadra is the automatic choice. With four RAID modes, eSATA, USB and FireWire ports, this external hard drive is equipped with an aluminum heat sink. With data transfer rates in excess of 165 Mbps, this is a product designed for professionals who need reliable data backup. Along with the Intego Backup Manager Pro for Mac and Genie Backup Manager Pro for Windows, this hard drive will cost you $299.99.

These were some of the best 2Tb external hard drives that are available in the market right now. It is tough to choose between them really as almost all offer comparable features. Let price and warranty be the deciding factor. If you ask me which I would choose, I would either go for the Western Digital hard drive or the Seagate drive, having used their products before! Go for the one which offers the best combination of features, within a price range that fits your budget.