If something should ever happen to your home have you ever thought about what you would save? For me it would be my family and pets first and then my external hard drive. I store all of my photos and home movies on it. However if my house was on fire, running into flames is not something I would like to do so I keep my hard drive in a fire proof box.
Storing all of your digital photos on your computer alone may turn out to be a big mistake. Something as simple as a power surge can wipe your computer clean and you would lose everything. That is why it is so important to back up your files on other devices. I decided to write this because just last week we had a power surge and my mom lost everything on her computer.
Luckily at the time my computer was o shut off so it was unaffected. Luckily my mom was using her new lap top that my family and I had just given her for her birthday. She had only had it for about a week so she didn’t lose too much. For her next gift I would like to find an external hard drive so that all of her files will be safe in the future.
Why Is It Important to Own an External Hard Drive When You Have Digital Photos?
When I switched to digital photography I was excited about not having to develop film. I was also amazed with how many pictures I could download off of my camera at once. In no time at all I had hundreds of pictures stored on my computer.
One day I trekked out into my yard to take some pictures of the big snow storm we had the night before. The snow was more than 2 feet deep and was difficult to get through but I got all the pictures I wanted. I also got a great one of my uncle Dave shoveling his drive way. He has a long beard that caught all of the snow flakes. He looked like the abominable snowman in that picture and it was one of my favorites.
Sadly I only have memories of those pictures because our computer was infected with a virus and it erased all of my photos from that day. Since then I have learned my lesson, to keep all of my irreplaceable pictures backed up on a external hard drive.
My boyfriend Justin is good at researching products online. He always finds me exactly what I am looking for. So he was the man I went to when I was wanted to buy an external hard drive. I didn’t want to spend too much but also wanted one that was good quality and big enough so that I could be assured that all of my pictures were safe.
The Western Digital WD Elements is a great choice. When I first heard about external hard drives I thought they would be big and heavy but this hard drive is about the size of a paperback book and weighs just over 2 pounds. That means it could easily fit into a fire proof box or in almost any drawer.
This hard drive could be the right answer for simple, reliable storage. It is really easy to add pictures onto it too. Just plug it into a USB port on your computer and start saving your photos, music, videos, documents and you can even back up your whole operating system.
I have also scanned my grandmother’s old photos onto my computer and saved them onto my hard drive as well. They were kept in old photo albums with sticky pages. I have heard that if pictures are kept in albums like these the acid used in the glue will eventually ruin the pictures.
Sadly some of her pictures were already damaged and there was nothing I could do to save them. We could not bear to lose any more of them so I scanned them into my computer to be assured that we would all have them forever.
All of my pictures have been safe and secure ever since. I’m glad I decided to find an affordable external hard drive because I sleep much better at night knowing that my photos are as safe as they can be.
