2012 Gift Guide: Seagate Backup Plus 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive

Seagate Backup Plus 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive

Regardless of your computer type, your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux) or how much you use your computer, everyone needs a good, complete backup of their system. Whether you are using the built-in Windows Backup system or Apple's Time Machine (which I highly recommend) a drive like this is simple to setup and offers peace of mind that your data is protected. In the case of Apple's Time Machine, the backup drive can even be used to restore you entire system to a new computer should you upgrade or suffer a computer failure (or worse, have your computer stolen or destroyed).

I like portable drives like this because they are powered directly from the USB port and do not require and extra power cable. This means that they are small and easy to move from computer to computer should you need to back up more than one. This also means they can easily travel with you if you plan on being away from your office for a few days.

You can buy portable drives in a variety of capacities. This 500GB should be fine for most people, but you can also find drives up to 1.5TB (terabytes = 1000 GB) if you need. This might be the case if you are working with large amounts of photos, audio or video.

Do yourself a tremendous favor -- pickup and use one of these portable hard drives to back up your systems every day. There is really no reason why you should ever lose your work again.

More 2012 Gift Guide Items:

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