Data backup, is one of those things that we know we should do, but it’s awfully easy to ignore.  Like the annual visit to the doctor, or a radiator service, we often put it off far longer than we should.  It’s not that there aren’t enough choices, but too often, none are particularly easy to implement.

I’ve had plenty of external hard drives previously.  My first was from Western Digital, and held a whopping 120 GB’s.  While I diligently loaded it up when I first purchased it, after not too long, it ended up in the bottom of a closet in a nest of USB cables and power bricks.  It was too simply overly cumbersome to ever see any regular use, made too much noise, and had no included software.  I’ve used USB powered hard drives before, which at least eliminates the power cable, but in years past they didn’t quite hold enough data compared to their fuller sized and speedier desktop cousins.  Based on notebook hard drives, they had limited capacities, and much slower speeds.  While a RAID array is ideal for hard drive backup, I don’t think most home users have the technical savvy to go that route, and my desktop doesn’t have the space for another hard drive.  While network attached storage (NAS) could have filled my needs, they tend to be expensive, and rather overkill for my needs of backing up a single desktop.
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