It’s one of those jobs that’s constantly at the top of my ‘To Do’ list. But for some reason it just never gets done; backing up all the photos of Teddy since the day he was born.
We literally have thousands. So many, that we’ve now maxed out the storage on both of our laptops and phones, and been forced to buy another humongous memory card for our camera to ensure our snap-happy first year of parenthood can continue uninterrupted.
Because at the end of the day, kids are constantly changing and memories fade. And when our babies are all grown up and have somehow transformed into grumpy, BO-ridden teenagers, the only way to truly remember what they were really like as sweet, innocent, angelic babes, is by taking a shit load of photos before puberty hits.
Sure, nowadays our favourite photos are uploaded in their thousands to the likes of Instagram and Facebook (inciting eye-rolling and defriending from our child-free chums). But it’s just not the same. Try printing out photos direct from a social media platform and you’ll be sorely disappointed (the quality is always piss poor compared to their more ‘photo-album-ready’ high resolution counterparts).
And yet I still wake up with a jolt at least once a week, in a cold sweat, after dreaming that all our digital photos stored on the computer have somehow been deleted…
And the reason for this recurring nightmare is because, despite my fears, I still haven’t done the responsible thing and covered our backs for the inevitable day when the computer finally packs it in, we drop our phone down the loo or the camera gets nicked, and our most precious photos disappear forever. It’s happened before (R.I.P. to all my Uni photos) and, with fate being the bitch that it is, it’ll almost certainly happen again.
So, when Maplin, the UK’s number one specialist technology retailer, got in touch recently and asked if I fancied trying out any of their products for the blog, I literally bit their hands off and set my sights on one of their colossal hard drives. Clearly, in my head at least, their email was a sign from the data gods that the time had finally come for me to cross this stubborn task off my ‘To Do’ list once and for all…
The one we ultimately received was Maplin’s WD 2TB My Passport Ultra-Portable USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Auto Backup…yes, you read that right…2TB = 2 terabytes, AKA 2,000GB. Basically, enough to store more baby photos and videos than even the most prolific parent photographers could take; roughly the equivalent of 640,000 digital images or 66 hours of standard videos. Exactly what we needed to claw back space on our devices and keep our digital memories safe from future mishaps.
Designed to fit in the palm of your hand, the My Passport hard drive also looks rather cool, and includes a load of clever features for added peace of mind. Like special back up software to act as an additional layer of protection against your files getting lost, and password protection to keep your files safe from prying eyes should the hard drive ever fall into the wrong hands.
What’s more, you can even set up a customised message within the device should you ever misplace it – basically a ‘return if found’ prompt if a kind soul picks it up and plugs it into their computer. They’ve literally thought of everything with this one.
If I’m being picky, the only slight snag to mention is that, while this product has driver free installation across Windows 7, 8 and 9 operating systems, it does require some reformatting if, like us, you want to use it with a Mac. But I’ve tried it out myself and the process is relatively quick and painless (I’ve since seen that there is another version of the product that is specifically made for Macs, so it’s probably worth looking into this one specifically if you are a staunch Apple user).
All in all though, it’s a great product which does exactly what it says on the tin/box…keeping your treasured photos backed up and password protected for you to enjoy for years to come.
Now, looking back at my ‘To Do’ list, if I can just find a similarly versatile gadget that can fill in my tax return, mow the lawn and finally paint the darned kitchen for me, I’ll be all set. If you know of any, please let me know!
This post has been written in collaboration with Maplin, whose full range of external hard drives can be found here.
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