Backing Up Your Data

Data Backups and Backup Strategy

One of the most overlooked computer processes is backing up data. Yet one of the most valuable assets we have is the data on our computers.

So why do so many users fail to make any type of backups at all?

Well, because when things are working fine, users think there is no problem. But your hard drive can crash anytime and when it does, you can have some serious trouble. How much valuable data is on your hard drive? Do you store photos, videos, financial data? What would happen if you lost all of that data today? Please think about it, because millions of hours and millions of dollars are lost each year due to data loss. If you lose your priceless family photos and videos, these cannot be retrieved. So take the time to do some basic backups, you will not regret it.

Here are some common methods in which you can backup your data:

Hard Disks/External Hard Drives

External hard drives/USB drives are becoming very chap. This is making it more competitive with magnetic tape as a bulk storage medium. The main advantages of hard disk storage are low access times, availability, capacity and ease of use. These type of drives are very easy to connect and you can store them offsite too. This is the easiest way to get started with backups and is highly recommended. Just copy across all of your vital data on a regular basis.

Optical Storage

CDs or DVDs can be used to store and backup your data. One advantage here is that CDs and DVDs can be restored on any machine with a CD-ROM/DVD drive. In addition, these media are very cheap. HD-DVDs and BluRay Disks dramatically increase the amount of data possible on a single optical storage disk but are not as cost effective. Optical storage is good for small amounts of data, but with data requirements becoming larger and larger, it is not the most efficient method.

Flash Drives

These are also known as USB drives, thumb drives, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, etc. These devices are extremely portable and easy to use. They don't offer huge capacity, but they can prove useful for backing up only the vital data that you require. For full system backups, you would not use this type of storage.

Magnetic Tape

Backing up to magnetic tape has long been the most commonly used medium for bulk data storage, backup, archiving, and interchange. Tape has typically had an order of magnitude better capacity/price ratio when compared to hard disk, but recently the ratios for tape and hard disk have become a lot closer. Tape is a sequential access medium, so even though access times may be poor, the rate of continuously writing or reading data can be very fast. Backing up to tape can be more costly and has greater overheads than many other techniques and is recommended for business and commercial use.

Remote/Offsite Backup Services

As our internet connections become faster, the use of remote backup services are growing. Remote backup services are cheap and very easy to use and they offer great advantages of having your data fully backed up in a completely different physical location. Initially backing up all of the data can be slow, but future backups are much faster as you only need to backup files that have been edited. Remote backup services are recommended for both home and business users. The only real drawbacks are speed issues and placing data on a third party server that could be compromised. So always choose a trustworthy service.

Whatever technique you decide to use, just make sure you backup your data in one way or another!