Choosing your backup hardware
Over the years, we’ve repeatedly exhorted you to back up your precious files, photos, videos and music. We’ve talked about built-in operating-system-level backup sol¬utions, about third-party software, and also other tips and tricks on making backup for a hassle-free experience. But the one thing we’ve hardly touched upon is backup hard¬ware.
So, let’s get down to it: where should you back up your data? Are CDs and DVDs passé? Should you have a cloud backup?
CDs/DVDs
Time was when optical disks were all the rage. But they don’t excite us so much anymore. The¬re are many reasons for this. First, these days not all computers have a built-in optical drive anyway. Second, CDs and DVDs don’t provide a huge amount of space. A CD-R/RW holds 700 MB of data, which is ridiculously low by today’s standards. Of course, an RW (rewritable) CD/DVD can be reused. A single-layer DVD-R/RW has 4.7 GB of space, while a dual layer has 8.5 GB. Double-sided DVDs can store 9.4 GB and 17 GB respectively.
Finally, optical disks can be notoriously unreliable. While under ‘ideal conditions’ data on disks are supposed to last up to 10 years, this means keeping it away from heat, humidity and dust/dirt. Contact with oxygen deteriorates the material on which the material is recorded, while dust and dirt result in scratches. Also, cheap, low-quality optical disks will have shorter life spans.
However, CDs and DVDs are still accessible and cheap, and a reasonable solution for anyone who has a clean, dry, cool space to store them in.
External hard disks
When it comes to the sheer amount of space it offers, you can’t top an external hard disk (HD). You can get them in sizes of 120 GB upwards, though these days 1 TB is a good size to start with given the amount of data we are hoarding. External HDs with capacities as high as 6 TB are also available. A 1 TB drive could cost Rs 4,000 upwards. External disks can be wired or wireless—though the latter cost more, of course. The drawback to external HDs is that they are susceptible to shocks and physical damage. If you accidently drop it, get ready to say bye-bye to your data. Hard drives do also crash occasionally and since they are made of mechanical moving parts, they will wear out eventually, say in about three to five years.
Pen drives and memory cards
Pen drives and memory cards are more reliable than hard drives in the sense they use flash storage that doesn’t contain moving parts which means they can be knocked about to some extent. They are also highly portable. However, having a limited number of write/erase cycles (usually 3,000 to 5,000) can make them restrictive for long-term backup. Flash storage also comes in a variety of capacities, up to 256 GB. Bear in mind that they are much more expensive per-GB than external HDs—a 128 GB flash drive can cost almost as much as a 1 TB external HD.
The cloud
Keeping your files on the cloud means that someone else has to worry about the hardware. There are plenty of options, Dropbox, OneDrive and Mega to name a few. Free space can be limited (Dropbox gives 2 GB, OneDrive 5 GB and Mega a whopping 50 GB) and you will have to cough up to buy serious cloud space.
So what’s the solution?
There really isn’t any 100 per cent reliable way to keep data safe. The trick is to build redundancy into a backup plan. So, instead of relying on a single type of backup hardware, make sure you have backups of your backup, especially for important files.
Source | Financial Chronicle | 14 June 2016
Over the years, we’ve repeatedly exhorted you to back up your precious files, photos, videos and music. We’ve talked about built-in operating-system-level backup sol¬utions, about third-party software, and also other tips and tricks on making backup for a hassle-free experience. But the one thing we’ve hardly touched upon is backup hard¬ware.
So, let’s get down to it: where should you back up your data? Are CDs and DVDs passé? Should you have a cloud backup?
CDs/DVDs
Time was when optical disks were all the rage. But they don’t excite us so much anymore. The¬re are many reasons for this. First, these days not all computers have a built-in optical drive anyway. Second, CDs and DVDs don’t provide a huge amount of space. A CD-R/RW holds 700 MB of data, which is ridiculously low by today’s standards. Of course, an RW (rewritable) CD/DVD can be reused. A single-layer DVD-R/RW has 4.7 GB of space, while a dual layer has 8.5 GB. Double-sided DVDs can store 9.4 GB and 17 GB respectively.
Finally, optical disks can be notoriously unreliable. While under ‘ideal conditions’ data on disks are supposed to last up to 10 years, this means keeping it away from heat, humidity and dust/dirt. Contact with oxygen deteriorates the material on which the material is recorded, while dust and dirt result in scratches. Also, cheap, low-quality optical disks will have shorter life spans.
However, CDs and DVDs are still accessible and cheap, and a reasonable solution for anyone who has a clean, dry, cool space to store them in.
External hard disks
When it comes to the sheer amount of space it offers, you can’t top an external hard disk (HD). You can get them in sizes of 120 GB upwards, though these days 1 TB is a good size to start with given the amount of data we are hoarding. External HDs with capacities as high as 6 TB are also available. A 1 TB drive could cost Rs 4,000 upwards. External disks can be wired or wireless—though the latter cost more, of course. The drawback to external HDs is that they are susceptible to shocks and physical damage. If you accidently drop it, get ready to say bye-bye to your data. Hard drives do also crash occasionally and since they are made of mechanical moving parts, they will wear out eventually, say in about three to five years.
Pen drives and memory cards
Pen drives and memory cards are more reliable than hard drives in the sense they use flash storage that doesn’t contain moving parts which means they can be knocked about to some extent. They are also highly portable. However, having a limited number of write/erase cycles (usually 3,000 to 5,000) can make them restrictive for long-term backup. Flash storage also comes in a variety of capacities, up to 256 GB. Bear in mind that they are much more expensive per-GB than external HDs—a 128 GB flash drive can cost almost as much as a 1 TB external HD.
The cloud
Keeping your files on the cloud means that someone else has to worry about the hardware. There are plenty of options, Dropbox, OneDrive and Mega to name a few. Free space can be limited (Dropbox gives 2 GB, OneDrive 5 GB and Mega a whopping 50 GB) and you will have to cough up to buy serious cloud space.
So what’s the solution?
There really isn’t any 100 per cent reliable way to keep data safe. The trick is to build redundancy into a backup plan. So, instead of relying on a single type of backup hardware, make sure you have backups of your backup, especially for important files.
Source | Financial Chronicle | 14 June 2016
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