I think it would be fair to say that the most essential piece of kit for any student at university is their laptop. However, as the average student loan doesn’t cover new computers when the old one wears out and as someone who uses their computer constantly, and who has absolutely no grasp of how to keep it safe, I often have nightmares of it just giving out mid-dissertation and never waking back up again.
Because, if you think about it, when we go on holiday we take out travel insurance, we probably have phone insurance, and it’s likely that we have home insurance as well, so why wouldn’t we protect the valuable contents of our computers?
So I took some advice from a friend and got myself an external harddrive, the Seagate Expansion 3TB, to be precise. It’s the size of a small book, weighs about a KG and needs to be plugged into the mains. However, it’s also quiet, discreet and, despite its weight, easily transportable if necessary.
To use it is easy, even for the technologically inept like me. I’m told that it works automatically on a PC, but on my mac I had to create a partition (whatever that means) but even that was incredibly simple, and afterwards it linked up perfectly with the mac Time Machine backup program.
It’s incredibly fast, I’ve backed up 115GB of data so far in around an hour and a half, which I’m told is impressive.
In short, I’m pleased with the hard drive, and I can sleep easy now I know my dissertation is safe, no matter what damage might happen to my computer.
This review was in collaboration with Tesco Compare home insurance.
I really like the idea of having great and reliable backup copy of my data. Having a reliable portable hard disk will really solve a great part of the issue.