Make sure you have a backup plan that works for you.
In the past 12 months, our world moved from a physical one into a digital plane. We all found ourselves confined to our homes and unable to return to the workplace until it was deemed ‘safe enough.’ This moment in human existence caused all employers to think ‘outside the box’ and find ways for their employees to retain their jobs while working from home. Because many of us were forced to use our personal equipment for this endeavor, it’s more important – now more than ever before – to emphasize World Backup Day as a time to backup your digital files.
March 31 is designated “World Backup Day” to help people remember to protect their digital documents. It’s the day before April Fools Day to help remind people to save their precious data and to “not be a fool.” The event originally began as ‘World Backup Month’ and was started by hard drive company Maxtor, which was later purchased by Seagate. One of the easiest ways to observe World Backup Day is to invest in an extra hard drive that is set aside for your personal backup activities. We’ve broken down some of the best options we’ve found for backups and outlined the features below.
WD_Black P50
This specialized hard drive is designed for use with gaming systems – specifically the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. This SSD can reach speeds up to 2000 MB/s and helps to decrease load times for gaming. The hard drive uses a SuperSpeed USB interface and has an extremely durable external case that is shock-resistant and ideal for portability. In our real-world testing environments, the SSD performed admirably and ended up with an average Read/Write speed of 851.3/827.8 MB/s across the four speed tests that were completed. With a real-time data transfer test, the WD_Black P50 had a transfer rate of 291.2 MB/s. This hard drive is a very capable, easy-to-use hard drive that has a unique purpose and function. It’s very efficient with data transfer and trustworthy. This is ideal for gamers to use as a backup drive.
SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive Go
At some point in time, every smartphone user runs out of space on their phone. The SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive Go is perfect for backing up these devices. It’s a portable USB memory drive for iPhone users to store photos, videos, and other files directly off of the phone. One end of the flash drive has a Lightning connector and the other has USB 3.0. This remarkable little device can be used either as a backup for the phone or as a shuttle between the smartphone and the computer. The iXpand Drive app is the only tool needed for users to take advantage of the automatic backup interface. As far as real-world tests go, I ran the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and a data transfer test. The Blackmagic test returned a read/write speed of 87.8/16.6 MB/s. The data transfer test showed the flash drive could move 0.83 GB in one second. The iXpand Flash Drive Go is a good investment for people who use their iPhones for lots of video and photo capturing. This little flash drive really makes life a lot easier.
WD My Passport SSD
This SSD is designed similarly to the WD_Black P50, but it’s more for all-around use than gaming. It’s meant to be compact, portable, and fast. It connects to computers using USB-C (USB 3.2 Gen-2) and can reach read speeds up to 1050 MB/s and write speeds up to 1000 MB/s. The hard drive features 256-bit AES hardware encryption and it’s secured in a metal case that has drop resistance up to 6.5 feet. This hard drive can be used with Apple Time Machine, but users also have the option to take advantage of the simple backup software included with the hard drive. The My Passport did a good job of providing efficient data transfer rates and had an average read/write speed of 786.9/850.1 MB/s. I’ve always been a fan of Western Digital products and this tiny SSD is a great addition to my hard drive collection. It’s perfect for quick backup needs.
WD Red Pro NAS HDD
This hard drive is recommended for pro-level NAS users. It’s specifically designed to work within a NAS device – especially larger 24-bay systems. These hard drives are engineered to handle increased workloads and it features advanced technology within NASware 3.0. These HDDs are offered in a variety of sizes from 2TB to 18TB. Based on my real-world experiences with the WD Red Pro NAS HDDs, I prefer to only use these hard drives in my NAS devices. They are top-notch drives and even though they are an investment money-wise, they are incredibly reliable. The WD Red Pro drives have been consistent in their performance and they are very easy to work with.
Take the time this World Backup Day to evaluate your backup system and create a workflow that will work best for you. It might be a single hard drive or perhaps cloud-based storage would work better for your situation. No matter what system you design for yourself, make sure you have a plan. It will save you the stress of losing data when you least expect it.
For more details, visit WorldBackUpDay, Facebook, and Twitter.