Gadgetory

excellent what's up guys welcome back to Pauls hardware today's video is going to be about three often overlooked computer accessories that I find to be vital I use every single one of these components or at least some variant of them just about every single day and although I talk often about the exciting parts that go inside a computer such as the processor and the graphics card motherboard memory storage I don't often talk about the stuff that goes outside a computer at least beyond the essentials like a monitor a keyboard and a mouse so my three categories for today are going to be an external drive connecting device which I have a few variants of right here a card reader which you might think is kind of a given but there are some things to consider when you're purchasing a card reader and lastly the vitally important but again often overlooked ups or uninterruptible power supply so let's start with the simplest one which i think would be the card reader now if you don't use an SD card for anything I don't I guess you must never take pictures I take pictures while often video very very frequently so recently I have upgraded from my 64 gig cards which were doing just fine for me when I was recording 1080 to some 256 gig SD cards which are very fast for the read and write speeds specifically for 4k because 4k uses up tons and tons of space now getting the data off of the SD card and onto your computer and onto a working drive where you can have it backed up and actually do stuff with it like editing can take some time especially if again you're recording at 4k so one of the things I purchased very early on was this little USB 3.0 card reader which is just an external unit plugs in USB 3 and then it has a few different reader slots around the outside whether you're talking about compact flash or SD or some of the other variants that aren't quite as common compact flash is becoming less useful but I got that when I was using my Canon 5d Mark - because it had a CF card in it and then SD is pretty much what I use by and large for most everything now this card reader has worked quite well for me even though again it's a pretty generic fairly inexpensive model that I got off of ebay and I'll like this down in the description if you're interested and the one thing I actually do like about this card reader is that as a little USB like just plug on it with a lead so I can plug it in into it I can narrow like USB slots especially if it's on the side of a laptop for example and it won't block the other slots so I thought that was kind of useful another one that I have right here is actually made by Kingston and this is the MobileLite g4 and I like this one because it has just the essentials it's only an SD card reader but has both the full-size SD card reader as well as the micro SD card reader on the other side again USB 3 so it's nice and fast a little bit sturdier as far as the design so I will often chuck this into my backpack without really considering protection for it which it's held up pretty well so far the one thing that I don't like about this again is that plug because it is fairly wide so when it's plugged in it can block slots next to it but other than that a very high quality one and again I'll link that one in the description if you guys are interested now another option for anyone who is looking for a card reader especially if you're building your own system is to go with one that's just integrated so you don't have to worry about you know a little dongle or something that you're plugging in or plugging into the front or rear USB ports on the system for that I would recommend something like this this is made by inter max it is the mighty charger ECR 5:01 and it's a five and a quarter inch bay adapter so you do need a five and a quarter inch Bay in there but it gives you a bunch of USB ports which is kind of nice including a USB 2 as well as USB 3.0 as well as a high amperage USB 3.0 for fast charging but then it's also got that card reader built into it pay very close attention if you're buying something like this that the card reader itself connects via USB 3.0 or even more ideally if you're looking towards the future USB 3.1 those are just starting to come out onto the market as well you'll find a lot of card readers will have USB 3.0 ports right next to them but the card reader itself will have a USB 2.0 connection and that can more than cut in half your transfer times especially if you're dealing with large files like 4k footage being transferred off of an SD card so there's some card reader options for you guys and I would especially recommend this if you're still relying on the old USB 2.0 card reader that came integrated into your laptop or as part of your case because upgrading to something like this will definitely be worth your while the next device I'm going to talk about here is what I'll call an external drive adapter because if you watch my channel and if you work a lot with computers chances are you're going to end up being a tech support person for someone in your life whether it's a friend or a family member at some points and often those people will have all the drives that you need to connect up somehow and this is in particular going to help out with older 3.5 inch drives especially ones that have an IDE connector does anyone even still use those yes you'll have someone who comes along with like a eight or ten year old computer and they want you to pull data off of it or something like that and it can be a real pain in the ass unless you have something like this so I'm going to go from my older and less elegant solution over here up to something that I think is a little bit more svelte shall we say so this was my old external drive adapter and it came with a couple different parts one was a wall wart just to provide some power this actually comes over with a little adapter here and plugs into this guy which is just a little on/off switch and a pass-through and that adapter which can then plug into this little splitter here actually this has a soul splitter coming off of it and that has a molex plug as well as a floppy connector on it so the molex plug I could use to just plug in any molex drive and provide power to it which is actually pretty convenient in some situations I've used this to plug in like a an optical drive just to eject it and get the disk out or something like that but once that's connected for power then I can take the power plug from the molex and either plug it directly into the drive or that floppy connector and plug it into this and then that will pass the power through this device this is actually what connects up the data for the drive so it has IDE and a couple different flavors on two sides here whether you're looking at the notebook form factor size or the full size 3.5 inch one and then of course a standard SATA adapter with full-size SATA power and data plug on that so I can use that to plug in newer drives that have the SATA connection standard and then of course just a USB 2.0 plug that goes over there so this again in elegant but it will allow me to take something that's quite outdated such as an IDE drive and still plug it in via a USB 2.0 to a computer so I can access it and pull data off of it and if you're dealing with a really old system and it's you know got problems and it doesn't boot up right or something but you still need to pull data off of it connecting just the drive up to something like this is a great option but again in elegance so let's move on to something that's a little bit more practical and a little bit more well user friendly which is what we like to call toasters something like this again you must be three instead of USB two on this one and then it's got a little slot that the drive drops into and this one won't work for IDE its SATA only but if you deal with a lot of SATA drives basically you just drop the drive in like that engages the SATA power and data connectors and then on the back you have a USB three type B cable that plugs in over to the computer and then of course a separate power adapter to provide power and I like this one because it's worked really well for me so far it's an off-brand but also has a power on/off button and I like that just to be able to I can turn it off while still leaving the drive in and the drive won't be spinning and making noise and being hot well I'm not using it so there is option number two option number three which is my favorite because again just simplicity it's just a little USB 3 adapter like this again SATA on one side a USB 3 on the other and it's actually got a little double plug on this side so that theoretically if you plug it into a USB port that doesn't have enough power available you can plug that into another USB port get more power and power up the drive now this will probably only work for smaller drives 2.5 inch drives that are made for a laptop and notebook use or SSDs because they use a lot less power but plug it in like that plug the other end into your computer and then you're good to go I use this as an external drive much as I would like I would use a thumb drive except it's connected to a one terabyte SSD and it's like the best fastest external thumb drive that you could possibly ever get except maybe some of the Thunderbolt options that are out there of course and I actually will edit off of this I'll put raw footage and just edit off of it on a laptop while I'm on the go again that does have limitations because for example if you have a larger Drive like a five and a quarter inch optical it will not have enough power to power that so you can eject and everything unless you're using again a slim drive that's made for a notebook and then it probably won't work for 3.5 inch drives either these just require a little bit more power and of course have the connection there for the older IDE if you need that so again a variety of options available here but choose the one that best suits your needs and finally the UPS uninterruptible power supply what this is is basically a big old battery that you plug into the wall that keeps itself charged and then you plug your vital devices into it and then if you have the power go out or if you trip your circuit breaker your system computer will still have power that allows you to get a bit of extra work done or most most likely just shut everything down properly so that you don't lose any information or have an improper shutdown I just got this one during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales from cyber power Cyber Monday cyber power it's a conspiracy this is a gaming system battery backup which means nothing gaming is just a purely a marketing ploy for this although I guess they're listening how long you can run an Xbox or Playstation 4 in a big-screen TV like you know if your power goes out Minik no I I must continue playing video games that's my only option let me pull this out real quick ok so this is a pretty typical UPS at least for home use and you can usually get ups that'll be good for home for around 80 to 120 maybe upwards of 150 to 180 200 dollars depending on how much power it's able to supply and how big the battery is so if the power does go out and it's drawing from the battery how long that will typically last so usually you plug them in hit the power button and turn them on so theoretically turn it on if the power is on which isn't happening here maybe now there we go got hold it in for a second and then up on the front it's got a couple USB to our USB ports so you can charge stuff off of that if you need to that's a more modern addition to UPS's not much to see other than that again it's just a big old battery in there and then most of the action is over here on the back where you have for example a USB connection so you can connect this straight up to your computer this is more for a situation where you have it connected to like a server or something like that where the server could communicate with the UPS if there was a power outage then the Surtur server would shut itself down automatically in the event of the power outage you can also rat your network through here if that's something that you want to do as well as coaxial cable and then a bunch of plugs some that are labeled as battery and surge some that are also labeled as surge protectors so this is also like a really high-end surge protector it will clean and filter the power that's coming out of your wall socket to provide more stable juice to whatever devices you have connected up to it and that's pretty much it if your power doesn't go out often it's still very possible to trip a circuit breaker by over lot over loading it with too much stuff on there these are the accessories that came along with and just to close with a quick anecdote the time that I found a UPS to be most use most useful for me well of course is when the power goes out and you're working on something and your computer doesn't shut off like oh my gosh I have time to save or whatever but I actually back when I lived in an apartment we had power outages fairly regularly and the power would go off to the entire section of the apartment but what I found was I could connect my modem and my computer like you know just the computer and the screen up my UPS had enough power to power those and even though the power was out to the apartment complex as long as a modem had power you know stay still able to get the data connection from wherever the node was set up so I still had internet and a workable computer at least for you know 20 to 30 minutes even though the rest of the power was out in the entire apartment and I thought that was kind of cool but that's gonna wrap it up for this video guys I hope you've enjoyed it did this one at a slightly different style than I typically do I was a little more off-the-cuff but let me know what you thought of it hit the thumbs up button if you enjoyed links again to all of these things or at least whatever ones are still available for sale are down in the description and we'll see you in the next video