We all know we have to backup regularly, but those backups
files can get huge. Add that to your existing your files and
your notebook computer hard drive seems to have shrunk
overnight. No matter what size hard drive you have on your
notebook computer, space is a premium. Besides, it's not
exactly a good idea to store your backups on the same hard
drive since you can't retrieve it -- rather defeats the
purpose of backing up don't you think? So what do you do,
what are your options?
Backup to an external hard drive. This is probably the
quickest, most cost effective option. You can often get a
removable drive on sale or with rebate for a low price too.
You can get one with hundreds of Gigabytes of space too. They
can be easy to hookup to your notebook computer. However, do
remember that they are hard drives and hard drives can fail.
You may find the external backup fails before your notebook
computer does.
Online backup. This is actually a good idea because physical
disasters can happen to your home. And when that happens, you
will always have a copy in a place not affected by the
disaster. This is why businesses usually have one backup in
the premises and one (or more) off premises. The good thing
about online backup is, it's accessible from anywhere with an
internet connection. So if your notebook fails when you're
away from home, you can still retrieve your data.
Many of these services are reasonably priced and they provide
you with everything you need to get the backups safely
transfered. But because your data will be on someone else's
system, choose a reputable company, one who is not only
established but takes customer data confidentiality very
seriously.
Network attached storage. This would make more sense if you
have several computers. They allow you to not only backup
several computers' data into one location but also ability to
share or retrieve files from that central area. You can also
achieve a similar effect equipping an older computer with a
large hard drive and use it just for storage or backup.
Backup to CD or DVD. This is considered the safest for long
term data integrity. External drives and network storage can
still crash and prone to virusses. CD's and DVD's are also
inexpensive. But backing up to disks daily is chore as you'll
find yourself having to manually pop in the disks. It becomes
even more hard work when you have a lot of files and your
backup spans several disks. The other problem with this
method is, backup utilities that come with your operating
system cannot backup to a CD or DVD drive. So you'll have to
fork out extra cash to buy a third party backup software that
will.
No backup solution is one hundred percent and what you choose
of course will depend on how you work. If your data is really
important to you, try not rely on one backup source. Create
two separate sources if you can afford to, just in case.
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