Are you backing up your digital pictures? Well, you should…trust me…you have to set up a plan to backup your pictures. Now that I have you convinced to backup your digital pictures, where do you backup your pictures? The simplest and cheapest way is to have an external hard drive. These are cheap, but they can also fail. I personally like an external drive that actually has two drives and automatically creates two copies of the same data. This way if one drive fails, you have another copy.
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Why do you need two copies of your digital pictures?
The answer is simple…because computer components and hard drives in particular do fail. No matter how much you’ve paid for a fancy new computer, computer hardware fails. So, you have to be prepared. In about 6 years I have had one hard drives and one motherboard failure. Good thing I had a backup of all my pictures.
So, the best thing is to create two copies of your pictures every time you back them up. Western Digital has created a cheap mirroring solution called Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition. It is a Dual drive storage system with Mirroring.
Are you backing up your pictures?
This is the cheapest way to safely backup your data. Right out of the box this system is configured to continuously duplicate your data for the ultimate in data protection. Pre-configured as RAID 1 for maximum data protection. This means that it creates two copies right out of the box. So you don’t have to do anything.
What I like about this external hard drive
- The first thing is that it creates two copies. This is very cool indeed !
- Fan-less. This means that it’s quiet and consumes less energy. The only thing I have to pay attention to is not to place anything on top of it because that’s how it ventilates.
- You can easily open the unit up and just replace a hard drive if it goes bad. Really, it’s that simple…just open up the case (it has a button on top) and pull one hard drive out and put a new one in. Make sure it’s the same size (500Gb).
What I don’t like
The light on the front is supposed to indicate how much capacity you’re using. It doesn’t work. Ok…it works but only after adding a ton of stuff. Anyway, forget about relying on it even though it looks pretty cool.
What’s in the box:
- Dual-drive storage system with RAID
- USB cable
- AC adapter (12 V)
- AC adapter
- Software CD
- Quick install guide
What does 500 Gigabytes mean?
- 220 hours of DVD movies
- 125,000 MP3s
- 142,000 JPGs – this is a lot. I have accumulated little over 40,000 pictures in about 7 years…so, plenty of room.
What software to install
I have only installed the WDDriverManager. All the other software appears to be on a trial basis only. So, I’ll stick to using SyncBack (Read Backup your data with SyncBack)
Additional resources for backing up your digital pictures
Check out the Western Digital Dual Drive mirroring edition. If you’re looking for a backup external drive this would make for a great solution. In addition if you purchase it using these links, you’re helping me out too and you also get a great price !
For Windows: Check out the Western Digital 1 TB Mirror Edition
For Mac: Check out the Western Digital 1 TB Mirror Edition
Essentials for organizing your digital photos
Here are the essential products and services I have come to rely on for many years to keep my media collection organized and safe. Even though these are affiliate links, I wholeheartedly recommend them. 
Excellent Lightroom and Picasa alternative. If you need a cheaper and simpler photo manager then ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac (save 20% until Feb 15) or ACDSee Pro for Windows (save $20 until Feb 15) is my preferred solution for organizing all my media. It has a very fast browser, great image editing and it's simple to use.
If you do a lot of image editing like I do, I recommend using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC via the annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom has best photo editing capabilities even though it comes with a steeper learning curve. If you do image editing, Adobe Lightroom is my favorite.
I recommend Backblaze Cloud Backup for affordable & reliable unlimited cloud backup. I have been using Backblaze for backing up all pictures & videos for more than 5 years now. All my invaluable digital memories are safe and secure. This is the best solution especially if you have a large quantity of media files.
Use a reliable & affordable external hard drive for backing up everything on your computer. It is absolutely essential for keeping all your memories backed up and safe.
Start organizing now using detailed, step-by-step instructions and videos:
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YOURS FREE! 10 crucial steps most people miss when organizing their digital photos
Most people want to just organize their digital pictures and ignore these crucial steps right at the beginning...when they are shooting and transferring their digital pictures. Then they wonder why they can't organize their digital photos! Avoid most people's mistakes and start on the right track!
