londonaccountant - ICAEW

TECHNOLOGYDON’T FORGETYOUR MEMORYPHILIP FISHER FINDS THAT YOU CAN BACK UP ALL YOUR DATA, TAKE IT AWAY WITH YOU ANDATTACH IT TO ANY OTHER COMPUTERHave you ever lost all of the data on yourcomputer? Even losing your contacts databaseor emails is enough to cause sleepless nights andmultiple weekends of effort trying to recover your life.In the old days, the only option was to back upeverything on to a floppy disk (remember those?) andmore recently, a CD-ROM, DVD or memory stick took over.These will all soon be things of the past, as productssuch as the WD My Passport Elite 500 GB hard diskdrive become all the rage. Available in a series of shinycolours (mine is metallic blue) that look really cool andweigh next to nothing, these capacious hard disks willliterally fit into a jacket pocket. That means they can betaken anywhere. Since they operate from a computer’sUSB port without any additional power sourcerequired, the hard drives are available to use withinseconds.This particular product, which is available for under£70, is a relatively upmarket version. In particular it hasits own docking station, although a USB cable is alsoprovided for travel use, an indicator on the front thatshows how much memory is left and an inbuilt memorybackup program called WD SmartWare.As soon as you turn on a PC or laptop or plug in MyPassport, the unit will start backing up all of the dataon the computer’s hard drive. The first time this couldtake days, but afterwards it will just update any filechanges, which might well only take a few seconds.MAYBE A LITTLE LIMITEDThis program is a little limited, in that there is a choiceof either backing up the whole system or one of half adozen specified file types including pictures, moviesand mail. In principle that is fine, but if you want tolimit what is backed up, it may be better to use adifferent program, possibly one supplied with yourcomputer’s operating system.As an alternative, rather than using a program, sinceMy Passports are merely external computer harddrives, you can just drag files from one folder toanother on the originatingcomputer, and within seconds youwill be able to pocket the harddrive and take it away with therelevant data safely stored.This hard drive has exactly thesame capacity as the one on mydesktop computer, and thereforeoffers far more flexibility than amemory stick. In addition tousing it as a facility to protect allof the data on a computer,there are several other benefitsthat might seem attractive.First, if you’re going awayand do not want to take acomputer with you, it’spossible to take literally all ofthe data on your computer(the largest My Passportholds 1 TB) away with youand attach it to any othercomputer, for example in anoffice or internet cafe.Similarly, if you have aNetbook or similarcomputer with verylimited memory, thiscan be supplementedby a portable harddrive, meaning thatyou can take a big bankof movies or photos away and have them instantlyavailable. Finally, it has proved a boon in loadingprograms on to computers without a DVD drive. Youjust copy them on and launch.The Elite version of the My Passport is an incrediblysleek and amazingly useful resource that should be acompulsory travelling companion for every busyLondon businessman or woman.WD My Passport Elite500 GB hard disk drivePhilip Fisher heads theemployment tax and rewardsteam at PKF24november/december 2010 londonaccountant