Options For Backing Up Your Data

Many people go through their computing lives without going through any kind
of backup of their PCs. It isn't until a catastrophic hardware failure do people
realize the importance of having a backup copy of data. Valuable documents,
expensive music files, and irreplaceable digital photos can be lost in the
blink of an eye. Once this happens, the only hope is a very expensive hard
drive recovery. You can avoid this route with some proper planning.

The easiest way to back up your data is to make a copy of it onto some form
of portable media, such as a floppy disk, Zip drive cartridge, or a recordable
CD. If anything should happen to your files, including a tragic hard drive
crash, you can recover your files from that backup copy.

What is the best media to use for backups? In the old days, you could use
Jaz drives and tape backups. However, they were very slow and limited in capacity.
They gave way to cheaper and better technologies such as recordable CDs. It
is pretty standard fare for today's computers to come with a recordable CD
drive. Many even come with recordable DVD drives. Floppy disks have always
been a good option because of their availability, but they only hold a little
more than one megabyte of data, barely enough for a few spreadsheets. Forget
about putting your mp3 collection on floppy disks. The best media to use, then,
will depend on what is available to you, what kind of data you will be backing
up, and how you intend to use the backup media.

If you are only looking to back up word processing documents, a floppy disk
might be all that is needed. If you need to back up graphics files, music files,
photos, or video files, you may need, at the minimum, a recordable CD drive.
When shopping for blank CDs, you will notice that there are the CD-R and CD-RW
varieties. CD-R means you can only record to it just one time, much like a
standard music CD. This is a good option when backing up a large amount of
data at one time to be stored away in an archive. It should also be compatible
with just about any CD drive so you can recover your data on any PC. CD-RW
is like a large-capacity floppy disk in that you can write to it any number
of times. The disadvantage is that compatibility is limited to other CD-RW
drives.

An external hard drive is becoming more and more popular. External hard drives
can be expensive, but it offers very large capacities and high speed. You can
also access the data at will, as if it resided on your C: drive. The problem
with external hard drives is that it is usually kept in one place. Unlike floppy
disks, CDs, or DVDs, external hard drives cannot be stored away inexpensively.
You would need to buy many hard drives if you want the flexibility of sending
your backups to another place. This is just not cost effective. If your home
were to catch on fire, both your computer's data and your backup data would
be up in smoke. On the flip side, however, external hard drives are still portable,
which means you can take them with you wherever you go. This is extremely convenient
if you need to carry extremely large files, such as graphics or movie files,
on the road.

With the proliferation of broadband connections in American homes, a popular
backup method is online storage. Many websites offer storage services – essentially
another hard drive at your disposal. Instead of residing inside your computer,
however, it resides on some company's server on the Internet. The advantage
is obvious: your data is off-site, so no matter what happens to your computer
or house, you can access your data from anywhere in the world. The disadvantage
is that you have no control over the company that is storing the data. If they
went out of business, your data would go with them. As well, this service is
usually one that requires a recurring monthly charge, whereas other media require
a one-time investment.