HP's new SimpleSave external hard drive series offers a "plug in and forget" way to backup your important data. The series includes a laptop (SimpleSave Portable) and a desktop (SimpleSave Desktop) drives.
Dong Ngo
Former CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He managed CNET's San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also wrote about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
The first and only click you need to do with the SimpleSave series is to agree with the end user agreement. This happens only the first time you plug the hard drive in.
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Starting the second time you plug the hard drive in, a window will appear with a 25 second countdown. You can click on the Option button to further customize the backup or do a restore. If you don't, the backup job will start by itself...
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...which looks like this.
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If you choose to customize it, you can change from the default settings which automatically picks the the popular files types of data to backup.
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The backup is being performed.
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It's finished! After the first full backup, the SimpleSave software will backup only files that have been changed since the last backup.
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This is the SimpleSave Portable. It's just a regular external hard drive (made by Western Digital) with HP branding and SimpleSave preinstalled.
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The drive is about the size as Western Digital's My Book pocket external hard drive series.
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It comes with one Mini-USB connection and a USB cable.