Disadvantages of Portable/External Drive Backup

Portable or external hard drives will only offer you minimal data protection if they are always attached to the very computer it is backing up . . . and not physically taken offsite every night.

Do not be fooled into thinking that mirrored drives, RAID systems, or additional internal or external drives are your solution to proper data protection. In fact, they provide only minimal protection against only one type of data loss...hard drive failure and nothing else.

If both the primary drive and the mirrored drives suddenly go away at the same time due to fire, flood, theft or sabotage, then you will have wasted every dollar and every minute you have ever spent on data backups up until that point ... period!

Portable / External Hard Drive Backup Overview

Drives cost $100 to $500 each

• Is the drive always attached to the computer it is backing up?
• If files were damaged or deleted several days or weeks ago, would you be able to easily find and recover older file versions?
• What would you do in the event of fire, flood, theft or sabotage?