Safe Data Storage at Home
While reduntant and secure storage are mainly the territories of IT departments and businesses, home and SOHO users are entitled to safe storage as well. There are a number of different ways that the home user or small business can safely store their information with having to hire a specialist or break the bank. This article is going to go over a few of those methods so as to help you choose which method is the right one for you.
The first thing a users must do is to realize what information of theirs is important and needs to be backed up. While the average users and business both have lots of data, not all of it needs to be stored in duplicate.
Next users must decide what type of storage solution they need- real-time redundancy or periodic backups. We will break up the article along these lines as they mark a critical difference between storage solutions. We will look at the periodic method first because it is much more common.
If you want to back up your important files or entire computer system from time to time or on a set schedule there are a number of great tools which are very easy to use. The best choice for this is an external hard drive solution, like those offered by Maxtor. These items connect to the computer via USB and can backup an entire hard drive (usually up to 500GB) with the touch of a single button on the device. This is an easy and effective way to backup a system or set of data which anyone can handle. This method is not particularly expensive and will generally cost under $350 depending on the size of the hard drive. Also, it should be noted that more extensive external units are available, some of which incorporate RAID 0 or RAID 1 for increased speed or redundacy respectively.
Another method to periodically backup from home is burning to DVD. This may seem inefficient but a dual layer DVD can hold up to 8.5GB and may just cost a few cents. Single layer DVDs hold less but are very cheap. On the whole, optical storage is cheap but stable and easy. So long as the discs are protected this method is easy when dealing with smaller amounts of data (ideally under 20GB).
A final method to consider is online storage. This can take shape in a number of different methods, but it is generally very secure and easy to access. The downside here is normally a monthly few and a limited amount of storage but it puts the data in a separate place so it can be invaluable. This method ranges from emailing files to yourself using Gmail to using a specialized internet storage service to renting your own server/hosting account and putting the data there via FTP.