If you’ve been told once, you’ve probably been told many times: Backup! Backup! Backup Your Files! Let’s face it, losing your data sucks and it is very expensive to recover so, backing up your files will save you time and money. CDs and DVDs are great, but they can scratch easily and, like vampires, have adverse reactions to the sun so my backup media of choice is the external HDD. I currently have two MadDog USB2.0/Firewire External HDD enclosures with a 233GB and 250GB Toshiba HDD, a SeaGate 750GB FreeAgent Pro drive, and a Western Digital 120GB Passport Drive. Life spans for these HDD vary but typically, you can expect the drive to work for as long as the warranty on them is (usually 3 or 5 years).
MadDog 3.5” HDD enclosures
If you have working spare HDDs laying around and don’t know what to do with them, this would be a good way to go. I have a black aluminum anodized Mega Vault enclosure with FireWire and USB2.0. It stays fairly cool to the touch even if I have it running all day and the big “Mad Dog” logo on the front lights up a bright blue so it is easy to tell when it is on or if my computer is accessing information from it. The FireWire connection makes transfers fast and that makes manually backing up files easy and painless. However, because it is just an enclosure it does not have a backup program and there is no encryption on the drive which leaves your files exposed and easily accessed. However, in exchange, it gives you the flexibility to choose the size of the HDD and swap out old or damaged ones which can save you money in the long run as long as the enclosure works.
Western Digital Passport Drive (80-250GB)
Small and portable, yet lots of space to store extraneous files to keep my Laptop’s HDD lean. The WD Sync™ tool is easy to configure and use and comes with a “Lost and Found” feature where you can input your details incase you ever lose your drive and an honest person picks it up.
Passport is able to import your bookmarks from IE or FireFox and has a secure browsing feature in which all the temp files from your internet surfing are stored on the WD Passport Drive and not on the internet café’s computer so only you will know where you’ve been. The only gripe I have about this function is that I like to use FireFox but the secure browsing feature only works with IE — which is probably why all of your stored bookmarks open only in IE as well. The program also keeps all files that you have synced with it on the HDD so if you work with your files on a public computer there will be no copies of that file transferred to the computer and the changes you made will be synced to your computer when you return home. There is one small light on the front to indicate if the drive is on or is being accessed.
Notes: when you get this drive you may want to go to options>file options and check to see that you are backing up all file extensions or else you may just think you are backing everything up and find that files are missing. Also, Passport uses AES encryption so all your data will be secure from prying eyes. The only thing is, there is no way to recover a lost password which means that you will lose all your information if that happens.
SeaGate FreeAgent™ Pro (12-750GB)
Aesthetically pleasing. That is how I would describe this piece of equipment. The connection ports at the base of the device is defaulted with a USB2.0 & eSATA connection but can be swapped out with two FireWire slots so you can daisy chain it with other FireWire drives. Data transfers are fast, and the version I have (750GB) leaves more than enough room to backup all of my data.
FreeAgent™ Pro’s interface is easy to use and makes the HDD utilities easily available so you can check on the status of your external with ease. It also provides an easily accessible way to create restore points and revert back to a previous state — if that sounds familiar it should be because it is WinXP’s System Restore function with a SeaGate skin thrown on. Also apart of the package, is SeaGate’s backup software (based on Memeo’s software of the same name) which makes backing up your files to multiple locations simple and easy. An added bonus to the software is that you can choose whether to encrypt your backups or not. If you are the type to easily forget passwords, this is a god send as you can leave it unencrypted so that you can access your back-up files with ease — although it means that anyone else will be able to as well.
Some gripes I have are that the power indicator for this drive in an orange strip which encircles the drive and so is easy to see in a moderately lighted room but hard to see in bright light. The power button is a little funky as you need to hold it down longer than one would think to turn on the device — I mention this because when I had first tried to power on the drive I thought it was broken because it did not immediately respond as I expected it to.
While writing about several external hard drives in the past, we at SmartTechBuy have not focused much on Apple products. Enter the Apple Time Capsule, so named as to back up a lifetime worth of your data! At 1 TB worth of storage space, it’s true that the Time Capsule should be able to back up your present and future life, that is until we go entirely virtual. What makes this external hard drive different however is that it is also a wireless router so you can network several computers to this for storage.
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