Are you one of those people with massive quantities of photos, videos, and music on your external hard drive because it doesn’t all fit on your laptop, desktop or maybe that super fast SSD that you have?
Since you are here I am sure you understand how important it is to backup that external hard drive before something bad happens, right?
It does not matter how new a hard drive is, it can still fail, even catastrophically. I have heard way too many times when repairing a computer: “but it’s not that old!”
That does not matter.
Ever changed a light bulb that had “2000 hours” stamped right on the box after just a few weeks? (I have, too many times!) Anything can happen with electronics and to be fair to the manufacturer, sometimes it’s not the drives fault.
Do you use a quality surge protector or un-interruptible power supply? Please don’t tell me your computer, external hard drive or ANY device connected to your computer is plugged directly into the wall!
There are two primary uses of External Hard Drives:
- Storing data that does not fit on the computer’s hard drive
- Backing up one or more computers
Either way, getting that data to an off-site location is important. If it is the only copy of some of y0ur data then you are at risk should that hard drive fail; and let’s be honest, many manufacturers of external hard drives install as cheap of a drive they can get away with because they know most consumers are price conscious.
Yes, it does matter how much you pay for a hard drive; cheap is cheap…
What if you (or someone else) accidentally deletes a file?
Even if your external hard drive is used to backup other computers, what happens if:
- A thief takes both computer and external drive
- Flood
- Fire
- Tornado
- Hurricane
- Tsunami
- Earthquake
There are so many reasons to backup that external hard drive to an online backup service. So…
Which Online Backup Services Support External Hard Drives?
Some online backup services will backup TO an external hard drive and we call that “local backup”. What we are referring to in this discussion is the ability to select files on (or all of) an external hard drive attached to your computer, whether by USB cable or eSATA (external SATA) connection.
Here are some of the services that will backup those files on the external drive:
Since you probably have LOTS of data on your external hard drive, we have placed and asterisk (*) next to those vendors who offer UNLIMITED backup or storage.
Take a look at those offerings an then why not –
Sign up for a free trial?