As we start the New Year, it’s a great time for resolutions. One of the best is to protect your digital memories for years to come. All those photographs and videos can be gone in an instant if not archived properly. Also, as you travel around the world, wouldn’t it be great to not have to worry about valuables left at home?
The best advice I can give is to use a two-pronged approach. Back up one copy to the cloud, and one to an external hard drive. From personal experience, I can attest to losing both, hence the need for two copies of everything.
While most would expect the cloud to be perfectly safe, I can assure you that it is not without problems. All of a sudden, some years ago, Microsoft would not let me access a OneNote account that had a few years of files stored. When I complained, they insisted there was nothing they could do to access the account. Hogwash. Never the less, two years of files were gone forever.
The other set of backups should be on a readily accessible external hard drive, preferably stored in a safe place. The best storage would be off-site, but unless you have network access into someone else’s server, you’ll probably be storing them on an external hard drive in your home. That begs the question, “What if there were a fire?” Computer gone, hard drives gone…yuuch.
Cannon Safe to the rescue
Cannon Office Solutions Model #OS4
I’ve recently installed a Cannon Office Solutions OS4 safe in my office. It measures 24” high x 20” wide and 19” deep. It fits perfectly under my desk and is out of sight, but easy to get to.
When first considering a safe, I was concerned about getting it delivered and installed. Turns out, they offer “white glove” delivery service, meaning a team of two men delivered it, uncrated it, and walked it into my office, placing it exactly where I wanted it. All I had to do was plug it in.
The Office Solutions safe that I have is ideal for your backup needs, as it comes with internal power and two media outlets for external hard drives. You can hook up both Ethernet drives and USB drives in the box and still have the fire protection needed to keep them safe. I’d recommend using the Ethernet drive for a couple reasons; but, more about that later.
The safe is locked with a digital pushbutton lock. Set a combination of six numerals or letters and a battery holds your combination for years.
Inside, there are two adjustable shelves, each covered in soft velour type material. There are also two pouches attached to the inside of the door – perfect for cords, accessories, media cards, etc.
Setting up your safe
If you decide to add a Cannon Office Solutions safe, here are some practical things to consider. The safe has two outlets inside, but one is used to power the internal LED lighting, so only one outlet is available.
I wanted to install two hard drives, so I needed to get a three-way adapter – and a wide one at that, as both drives had larger than normal wall wart plugs. The one shown here worked perfectly after I raised the lower shelf by one notch.
There are two USB jacks for your use. Both provide power to your devices, so you could use them both to power up phones, GPS devices, etc. But, only one has an external data connection, so only one can be connected to your computer. If you plan to use that, you’ll need a special cable.
The connection on the outside of the safe is a female USB slot, just like the one on your computer, so you’ll need to buy a special USB Male A to Male A cable to connect it. You’ll probably need to special order it, as most stores don’t carry them. I couldn’t even find one on Amazon.
Lastly, you might want to order short USB and Ethernet cables for inside the safe to eliminate a big wiring mess with six-foot long cables.
There’s also another issue with the USB hard drives. Since they are being connected to your computer with three separate wiring devices, I found that powered drives would not stay connected, and were constantly loosing connection and rebooting every hour or so. Replacing them with a bus-powered USB drive solved the problem. That would also eliminate the need for the three-way adapter.
My favorite connection however is the Ethernet adapter, so I can attach a network drive, giving me my own “cloud” connection from anywhere that I can get to the Internet. I’ve got a couple Western Digital drives that have worked well in this way.
Wrapping it up
The safe is already earning its keep, giving me a lot of peace of mind, while providing additional space for lots of my more expensive camera gear. If you feel a safe is in your future, and you want to keep your future safe, you owe it to yourself to check out Cannon Safes. They are beautiful looking as well as super secure.
Disclosure: Cannon provided a unit to enable us to do this review.
