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Archive for July, 2010

Backing Up Your Data

Unfortunately, one of the most crucial  functions of computing that is unnoticed is data back up. Probably, the most useful asset we have is our data, and countless  users only realize this when it goes missing and they can’t retrieve  it. Backing up is easy to do and very cheap too.

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

Usually,  when things are working fine, users think there is no problem. But your computer   can crash anytime and when it does, you can have some serious problems . How much valuable  data is on your hard drive? Do you store photos, home movies, and financial data? What would happen if you lost all of that data right now ? Take a minute   to think about this, because if your disk  crashes, you could lose priceless data. You might  be able to use data recovery software to fix this, but that is definitely not a 100% guarantee. Some fast and simple backup methods are listed below:

Hard Disks/External  Hard Drives

External hard drives/USB drives are becoming very cheap. This is making it more competitive with magnetic tape as a bulk storage medium. The major   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 it is encouraged. Just copy across all of your important   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 low cost. HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray 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.

USB   Drives

These are also known as USB drives, flashdrives, 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 large   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 quick . Backing up to tape can be more costly  and has bigger  overheads than many other techniques and is recommended for business and commercial use.

Remote/Offsite  Backup Services

As our internet connections become faster, theuse  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 totally 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 remote   server that could be compromised. So always select a trustworthy service.

Whichever technique implement, just make sure you backup your data in one way or another ! You can learn more about backups at Windows Data Recovery.