3 Reasons for 2 External Hard Drives

I’ve spoken before about the importance of having a backup for your filing system. It’s important because if you don’t have a backup to your system and something happens (you get hacked, you change providers and lose something….you accidentally delete the whole thing as I did…), then you will likely not be able to get it back. For this I have, in the past, highly advised going with an external hard drive. The reason for this is because if something happens to your system or your computer, you will have a backup somewhere. Today I’m going to take it to the next level.

I think you should have two external hard drives that you back up your filing system to.

I want to be able to emphasise this because it’s something that you need to think about. Having a backup for your system is great, But what happens if something happens to your backup? This is why I like having a secondary backup. It gives me peace of mind that I will have my information secured somewhere. There are loads of other reasons to have two external hard drives, but I figured I’d go through the most pertinent ones;

1) Having an extra backup – Your files are where you will very likely keep all of your most important information. If you’re willing to back it up (which you should be doing) why wouldn’t you be willing to back it up twice? I like having an extra backup for my files because that way I know that I’m doubly covered if something goes wrong. Having to rely on one device to maintain all your information is never a good thing. That’s why having it on three is excellent. I am of course referring to the two external hard drives and the Cloud system that I certainly hope you are keeping your data on in the first place.

2) The ability to keep your data in two different locations – I tend to have two different external hard drives in two separate places. I keep one in my home which while good is technically right next to my computer. If something were to happen to my laptop to make it not work any more than I’m assuming it would happen o my hard drive as well. That is why I keep a hard drive in my office too. The reasoning that I use (quite brashly I might add) is that “if either of those buildings burns down (knowing on wood to prevent such a thing) then I will still have a backup of my files somewhere.” Now I know what you’re thinking. If you’re going to have two hard drive why not three or four? There are two reasons why I stick to two. Firstly, I usually only frequent the two places and keeping a third or more would be tedious for me. Secondly, yes you could have multiple copies on multiple drives, but that takes time to update, and I update my drives once a month. Currently, it only takes me a half hour…with more than two drives it would take longer.

3) Password protection – I have password encrypted my drives so that they are only able to be opened on my machine. What I like about this is that to access what is on my drives, you would need my computer, the password to my machine, and then the password to unlock my drive. If you’re able to get all that in place….you’re likely me, and that’s fine. If you were to steal one of my drives, it wouldn’t even read on another computer without the software in place to recognise the machine.

In this turbulent world where ANYTHING could happen to your data, it’s always good to have a backup of your data, and it’s even better to have a backup OF that backup so that you are double protected from something going wrong. Usually, I like to make it so that I don’t have to worry too much about where my information is, and having two backups gives me peace of mind.

Would you back up your data twice?

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