SEO in The Desert

By Richard V. Burckhardt

I’ve had my eye on an external hard drive for back up purposes for a while and when I got the opportunity to review the Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB USB drive, I jumped at it. With a few exceptions, it hits the mark for my purposes.

The drive itself is in an attractive upright storage case with a light indicator (a very BRIGHT one) giving you an indication of how much space you have used on the drive. The case also includes cooling vents (no fan), cable lock port, power and activity lights.

Hooking it up is a breeze, just plug it into a USB port on your computer and then into a power outlet. The WDSmartWare software installs easily, setting itself up as a virtual CD drive (which could become a problem if you use more than one My Book), and is intuitive and easy to use, but basic. You can schedule backups, retrieve backed up files and see the status of your drive in your taskbar.

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SanDisk has an updated version of their Cruzer Titanium USB flash drive. I gave glowing reviews to the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium USB Flash Drive with Skype a few months ago. The updated version keeps all of the great features and adds a few more.

In addition to sturdy, ready-for-heavy-duty-action construction and tons of free and inexpensive software, the new SanDisk Cruzer Titanium Plus boosts the capacity from 2GB to 4GB and also includes a new, innovative feature – automatic online backup.

As you’ll recall, the idea is to allow you to sync the Cruzer with all of the files and programs you need on your primary PC so that you can simply pop the USB drive into another PC somewhere and use all of those files as if you were working on your main PC. Once you eject the Cruzer from the “guest” PC, there will be no trace that you were ever there.

Sort of a PC in your pocket!

But, what if you change some crucial files on the Cruzer and lose it on the plane or, heaven forbid, run over it with your Hummer (That’s about what it would take. This baby is tough!) before you have a chance to sync up with your primary PC?

That’s where the automatic online backup comes in. Powered by BeInSync with Amazon Web Services technology, the encrypted online backup service is free for six months, and costs $30 a year after that.

The benefits of the online backup are many. If your Cruzer Titanium Plus is lost or broken while you are on the road, you can access your files through the online backup service on any Internet connected device. If you delete needed files by accident, again, you can retrieve them through the online backup.

No Internet connection at the moment? The Cruzer Titanium Plus will do the backup automatically the next time you are connected. Worried about security if the drive is lost or stolen? You can activate an encrypted password protection system to keep prying eyes out.

Alas, there still doesn’t appear to be any kind of VPN client available in U3 software format, severely limiting what could be a great business product.

The Cruzer Titanium Plus retails for $59.99 (But can be found for less online. See the link below) and is compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista.

Check out the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium Plus at Amazon.com.