There are few feelings worse than discovering that your hard drive has failed, and the subsequent realization that you have just lost every important document, song, or photo that you have collected over the years.
While such a loss is troublesome for anyone, such a loss of data could spell tragedy to a law student or bar hopeful, especially if it occurs prior to an exam, paper due-date, or just before the bar exam itself.
According to PCWorld, approximately 26% of hard drives will fail within the first four years and chances of failure exponentially increase beyond that time. Because a typical law students career spans roughly 3.5 to 4 years, between entering law school and finally taking the bar exam, many of your peers (and possibly yourself) will experience a computer failure at some point.
There are many solutions that exist for backing up your data, ranging from extra hard drives, backup software, and cloud option, but my favorite of them all is the lowly USB drive. Corsair is a company that makes USB drives, and has one specialized backup USB in particular that I truly love; the Corsair Flash Survivor Stealth. This large capacity drive (up to 256GB) is designed to resist both shock and water damage. It is permanently mounted inside a cushioned metal tube, with a threaded cap sealed by an o-ring.
This drive has saved all of my important documents, photos, and entire music library at least three times now, and is typically the simplest and cheapest solution. With no extra hard drive to worry about, no subscription costs, and no software to install; you can easily backup your important data on the fly and recover it in minutes with any computer you have access to.
One of these drives accompanies me everywhere I go, and it is an invaluable tool.