A Stress Free Backup Plan When You Are Home and Abroad

At Project Eve, we are always on the hunt for new ideas and products that will make our hectic lives easier, more efficient and involve less stress. When it comes to travel we are particularly attuned to anything that will make a trip better. Enough unexpected things always come up when you hit the road, so if we can find any one thing that might limit the downside and maximize the good we want it.

Recently, we had the opportunity to try out a new backup tool (SanDisk’s iXpand Flash Drive) that every iPhone or iPad user should consider bringing on their next trip. Rather than lugging around a laptop so you can sync up your latest photos, videos, and contacts each night simply pack this small (it fits in the palm of your hand) light-weight (less than 1 oz!) but easy to use (we were up and running in less than a minute) backup tool.

Perhaps many of you aren’t as paranoid about backing up as we are. Maybe you haven’t lived through a cell phone taking a dive into a lake when your kayak capsizes. We have. All the great shots that only lived on the phone were gonzo! All the contacts uploaded at the conference that preceded it gone too! Perhaps you haven’t lived through a hard drive crash. We have. 90% of those images were retrieved after a nerve-wracking trip to the PC doctor. The rest…poof! We have so very many digital files we weren’t even sure that we were missing. A dear friend of ours knows what she is missing….all her digital photos! Anything that wasn’t in a physical album vanished when a thief broke into her home and stole all her electronics while she was on vacation. She had considered backing up but never got around to doing it.

You’d want to prevent that mess right? We sure do. Now we religiously backup in as many ways possible. Backing up to your computer is a start but if you aren’t on a work trip do you really want to lug a laptop around and deal with the mess of cables so you can back up each night? If you are on a business trip are you going to sync all your photos to your work laptop? Yikes, probably not. If you are traveling for pleasure, this would also assume you aren’t too exhausted from all the fun and work on your trip to plug in and sync up and that your computer is secure while you are out and about during the day. (Don’t even think about leaving it in the trunk of your rental car).

Many people turn to cloud-based solutions to back up. We do too. But, we also recognize the cloud can’t be the sole solution. For cloud backups to work you need a great internet connection. That might be fine when you are home or at work but as soon as you hit the road you’ll see the limits. While decent wifi can be found in many domestic hotels, traveling internationally is a whole different ball of wax. Even when in-room wifi is guaranteed by your hotel you might find your connection so slow you’ll need to turn off any cloud syncing just to send an email. Also, when you don’t have access to wifi consider what cloud-based syncing might do to your data plan if you haven’t severely limited its use while you are traveling. Precious international data plans can run dry after one session of turn by turn instructions on a long road trip. Even when you are home cloud-based platforms have limits. They can get hacked or worse, someone you share your account with doesn’t know what they are doing and unwittingly deletes files while trying to free up some memory. (Don’t laugh. This happened to us too, more than once!)

All these challenges are the reason we love being able to add Scandisk’s iXpand Flash Drive to our backup arsenal. While on a trip just recently, it helped us backup daily without having to lug around a whole bunch of heavy devices, waste our precious international data plan, deal with a tangle of cables or rely on frequently temperamental or at times non-existent hotel wifi. Yet, we felt secure as we avoided pick-pockets, took an underground boat ride and hoped on and off trains and subways. We knew that we had backed up with the super portable, easy to use iXpand.

Highlights from our iXpand test drive:

Super fast setup. Simply download the app and plug in your device. If you run out of time on your initial backup there is a pause button so you can resume it later.
The device syncs with a small rubber cable with lighting port. Not another cable to keep track of or tangle. Just long enough and flexible to work with most iPhone and iPad cases.
Lightweight and super compact, iXpand fits in a back pocket or even the smallest clutch. Adding this item to your bag isn’t what will put you over a weight limit!
The iXpand also helps you free up memory! Never see this dreaded message again when you go to take a picture. You can select the option to delete images after syncing allowing to rapidly free up memory and know that the iXpand makes it super easy to move images back onto your device if need be.
The iXpand makes additional syncing a snap too, rather than dealing with a sync of your entire phone (apps music and all) and weeding out what other family members on your account have added each time you want to back up some images or contacts simply pop the iXpand into your USB port and load them up.

Since we are recommending finding multiple ways to backup, none of them can break the bank. The iXpand has that covered too. The iXpand is reasonably priced AND for a limited time it’s even more reasonable! Click HERE to receive $50 off your purchase and save over 45%. What’s not to love!?!