Backup and Storage

Here five different types that be used for your data backup.

Hard Disk Drive (HDD) – This is probably the most common method used when backing up your data.  The capacity of a hard is measured in mega-bytes (MB) or giga-bytes (GB).  It is important you know the size of your drive and how much free space is needed and available before performing a backup.  This information is critical if you are backing up data under a different file name on the same drive.  Also, if the backup fills up the entire drive it cause poor performance when opening files. The disadvantage is if your hard drive crashes you lose all of your data.

Compact Disc (CD) – CD’s are another type of media that can be used for backing up data.  There are many different types of CD formats available to use.  The DVD-RW format disk is the largest in size it can hold up to 4.7 GB of data and is ideal for backing up large amounts of data. Other formats range between 600 and 800 MB, and are good for smaller amounts of data.  Compact discs are also very durable and easy to store.

USB Drives (Flash Drives) – Flash drives are small and portable and they are ideal when needing to transfer data from one PC to another.  Flash drives capacity ranges from 1GB to 128GB.  It’s a good idea to have multiple drives in different sizes.  The reason for this is that you may want to use one drive for your business files and the other for personal files.

External Hard Drive – External drives are good for backing vary large amounts of data and can be used to archive your old data on the drive.  Another thing you do is to backup all your computer software disks onto the drive and they will be in one place.   The external drive can also be used as a replacement drive if the internal drive crashes or gets corrupted.

Using the Cloud – Backing up data on the cloud has become more popular within the past years.  By backing up data in the cloud is good for most files, but for very large amounts of data the download procedure can be a little slow.  You can also download your files to your smartphone using the cloud system.  The only disadvantage is you don’t have anything tangible like you would have with the other types of backup media.

Please feel free to forward this information to others.  If you would like to learn more on this topic or would like to request an area of technology you are interested in, please send me an email.

Until then…Happy Computing!!!