Backing Up Computer Data - The How and Why
Backing up data is very important weather you are a student, book writer, or own your own business. Many people wonder how and where data should be backed up. There are many places you can back up information. But keep in mind that it truly depends on how sensitive and important the information is. If you were backing up sensitive personal, or business data the best alternative would be a CD, DVD, or soon to be Blue Ray disk.
With a disk that says DVD-R or CD-R you are able to write to it and have it to be permanent. You cannot delete any information on the disk unless you physically tamper with it. Keep in mind there are other disks called DVD-RW and CD-RW which means that they are “re-writable”. When backing up data you should look for storage mediums that are permanent and will last a long time and a CD-R disk is one of those.
Also it is important to backup information in multiple places. There are file hosts on the Internet that allow you to setup an account and an “unlimited” number of files as long as they are under 100 megabytes when uploading. One such website is called www.mediafire.com.
If you are a student it is recommended that you back up all of your documents you have ever typed. This will allow you to use previously typed documents for future classes with only a few tweaks here and there to fit the assignment's guidelines. This is very useful in college where many professors will assign essays.
Why should I back up my data? Simply because there are things that could happen to your computer whether it be physical or software related. Computer hard drives store long term data and they are susceptible to mechanical failure. Also data could be accidentally deleted by a guest.
How often should I back up? It depends on what you are doing. I backup my essays every time I get one done to www.mediafire.com as well as My Documents. For a business that has to keep regular records it could range from everyday to once a month. If your are still not sure how often you should back up your records imagine what you would do if data was lost back a month or two. Would it be easy or hard to recover that data?
One of the more convenient but not permanent ways of backing up data is to back it up onto a flash thumb drive. Flash thumb drives are quite universal due to the USB ports on many computers today. It is a great backup for temporary data and transferring a few small files from one computer to another if there is no network available.
For larger but temporary files consider an external hard drive. When considering how much storage capacity measured in gigabytes that you should get find out the total “size on disk” that the file occupies. If you are dealing with files greater than a gigabyte you may want to consider an external hard drive. There are many storage capacities which may be titled 80gb, 120gb, 160gb, or even 1tb. A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes and is a lot of storage capacity and is not recommended that you get one of that size. An average but descent hard drive would have to be the 160gb hard drive.
Also if you are still using floppy disks you are better off flushing CDs down the toilet. A floppy disk is susceptible to a lot of wear and tear because of it's magnetic read and write. Also the floppy disk is very slow to write data to and has a very low capacity of 1.44 megabytes. Which may fit a picture and a half of todays digital cameras. Also, relative to technology, something that was developed in 1987 is comparable to Stephen Hawking using an abacus.
When technology improves you should adapt. Holding on to old technology will only leave you in the dust because today's world norm demands time and efficient productivity.
