External hard drives are my new favorite tool for small businesses.
Last year, I bought a Western Digital My Book. It cost me under $100, and it’s small enough to carry around to my various computers. This one holds 500 gb, and that’s more than enough for me, even with my digital photography habit.
The hard drive in my laptop crashed this week, so I was very, very glad to have that backup.
Other models work with your wireless network, so you can copy files to and from them without hooking up any cables.
If you don’t have an external hard drive in your small business, take a look. It might solve a big problem for you.
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
Hi Becky,
I’d add one more big advantage for a small business to have use external hard drives: a repository for bookkeeping files, invoices, and other sensitive information.
A few years ago I realized that my (at the time) sole laptop, which I was taking all over the place, contained everything. Sure, I backed up the data, but if the laptop were stolen the thief would have my EIN, my SSN, a snapshot of my business finances, and a lot of other confidential information. So I moved anything sensitive to an external hard drive.
Now I’m doing to go backup my data. :)
Best,
Daria