TechTips

The data on your hard drive is the most critical item inside your computer, and the only item which can not be replaced. It may be anunwanted hassle and expense to replace a defective memory module, monitor, or processor, but there is no replacing data once lost.

USB Flash Drives

Although I am not recommending that flash drives be
used for the actual data storage, they are a convenient means of
transferring data from one computer to another. Important files can be
quickly loaded onto a device such as the MINIDISK-512-DGRY-CS
USB 2.0 Flash Drive, and transported to another computer for safe
keeping. Installation and operation is extremely simple, and other than
perhaps having to install a software driver, the use of a USB flash
drive is a matter of having an available USB port on your computer.
Just about every computer produced over the last several years has USB
ports included, with more modern systems supporting the USB 2.0
standard. USB 2.0 allows for data transfer rates of up to 480 MB/s,
which is a tremendous improvement over the original USB speed limit of
12 MB/s, and allows a user to fill their drives with data in a
relatively short period of time.

Although the
storage capacity of flash drives has increased greatly over the last
year or so, users are still limited to common sizes of 512MB and 1GB.
Mass storage is obviously not an option, but even 512MB may be enough
to backup your “My Documents” folder, several albums of MP3s, or other
important files to be stored elsewhere.

CD and DVD Writers/Re-Writers

The falling prices of CD and DVD writers/re-writers have made them a
staple of just about every modern computer. These devices can typically
be found installed in a computer case, but external devices supporting
USB 2.0 or Firewire are available for greater flexibility and ease of
installation.

A combination drive, such as theNU Technology DBW-521,
will provide the user a high speed CD reader/writer, as well as a DVD
reader, for under $40. The extremely low price of the drive (and the
blank media) makes for an inexpensive means of creating data backups,
and the re-writable media increases the convenience by allowing the
same disc to be erased and reused many times. The main limitation of
using a CD writer for data backups is that the discs are generally
limited to a capacity of 700MB per disc. Not nearly enough for a full
backup, but adequate for archiving key files.

The
popularity of DVD writers/re-writers has surged thanks to dropping
prices, and they are pushing the stand alone CD burner towards
extinction. DVD media affords the user far more storage capacity than a
CD, and DVD burners can generally burn CDs as wells as DVDs. The recent
availability of double layer DVD burners, such as the Sony DW-D22A-DO-N,
represents a large boost in the capacity of writable DVDs, taking the
previous limit of 4.7GB per disc and nearly doubling it to 8.5GB.

With
proper storage, CD/DVD media can provide long term storage that can not
be jeopardized by hardware failure. The data on a CD or DVD can easily
be read by just about any computer, making it a good choice for
archiving files that aren’t excessively large.

External Hard Drives

As the name might imply, external hard drives are generally the same
type of drive you might find inside your system, but housed in a
smaller, external enclosure of its own. The enclosure will feature at
least one data interface (such as Firewire, USB, or Ethernet), and the
capacity is only limited by the size of hard drives presently available
and the user’s budget.

The Ximeta NetDisk
is an example of an external hard drive that provides a user the option
of connecting an additional 80GB, 120GB, or 160GB of storage to their
system by using either a USB 2.0 or Ethernet connection. Installation
for such a device is rather simple, and may involve the installation of
some basic software, as well as making the necessary connections
between the computer and the external enclosure.

The
capacity of external hard drives makes them ideal for backing up large
volumes of data, and many of these devices simplify the process by
including software (or hardware) features to automate the backup.

For
example, some Seagate External drives feature a “one-button” backup
option right on the case.In addition to being a convenient method of
backing up large volumes of files locally, most external hard drives
are compact enough to be portable. The inclusion of a common data
transfer interface, such as USB, allows an external hard drive to be
connected to just about any modern computer for data transfer, or for
more than one computer to share the external hard drive as a back up.

Additional Hard Drives

By simply adding an additional hard drive to you system, you can
protect yourself from data loss by copying it from your primary drive
to your secondary drive. The installation of a second hard drive isn’t
difficult, but does require a basic understanding of the inner working
of a computer, which may scare off some users. We do offer a “how-to”
section on our site for many tasks such as installing a hard drive into
a computer system.
To take the installation of a
second hard drive to another level of security and reliability, the
hard drives may be installed in a RAID array. RAID stands for a
Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks, and can be
configured in several manners.

A thorough discussion of RAID and all of
its variations would be an article all by itself, but what may be of
interest to this discussion is what is known as RAID 1. A RAID 1 array
requires two hard drives of equal size to be installed on a RAID
controller, which will then mirror one drive to the other in real time.
Many motherboards now come with RAID controllers onboard, but the
addition of a PCI slot controller card, such as the Silicon Image Sil0680,
is an inexpensive purchase that will add RAID to any system. With a
RAID 1 array in place, if one hard drive should ever fail, the system
won’t miss a best by continuing to run on the remaining good drive, and
alert the user that one drive may need to be replaced.

Online Storage

Online services, such as Xdrive,
allow users to upload their files to a server for safe keeping.
Although it may be convenient to have the data available wherever an
internet connection is available, there are a few limitations.

The services generally charge a monthly fee relative to the amount of
storage space required. At Xdrive, for example, 5GB of storage costs
$9.95 per month, which can quickly add up to more than one would spend
on any of the other options discussed.

Security is supposed to be very tight on these services, but no matter
how secure it may seem, it is still just a password keeping prying eyes
from your potentially sensitive documents.

The speed of your internet connection will also weigh heavily on the
convenience of your backup, and no matter what type of connection you
have; it can’t compete with local data transfer rates.