subject: Helpful Hints On How To Protect Your Data [print this page] In what situations would you need data protection ? Well lets say you have a power spike and your HDD gets fried what do you do then ? Get a new HDD of course but what about the pictures ? What about the music ? What about those work files ? Even the saved game files ? There are solutions to this but they usually imply that you leave your HDD at a strangers mercy meaning your privacy gets a big question mark ? Will that guy respect your privacy ? Probably or probably not depending on your point of view.
So how do we fix this ? By using online data storage . Which is very useful and practical . For example you've left your computer at the hands of your child or nephew and while installing his favorite game or browser or instant messaging service he also installed without fault of his own , except inexperience , lots of spyware and viruses or toolbars over toolbars making your own browsing window only about three inches clear , well if you saved your computers configuration on a data site you just use that clone to rollback to your previous PC state making it as if it never happens . Or it got so serious you need to delete everything and format and reinstall your operating system , like Windows or MacOS or Linux , and you do just that and again that clone you left online on a storage site will restore your previous system state along with all of your saved data .
Another way to use online storage is by making backup of individual files , not the whole system so you can access them as needed or you don't make a backup at all and store the original file online.
Some will say that you can do this with an external HDD and you don't need to let the important information out of your sight , and I pretty much agree , however what about break-ins ? If someone wants to steal your computer and targets it specifically don't you think they will search for other pieces of hardware like an external HDD ? If not by the value of the information but simply by the value of the hardware . So if that happens it is actually cheaper and safer to back them up online.
You still don't feel safe ? You think the online server may be hacked and your data may be compromised ? There is hint I can give you ; change the extension on your files , you know the last three letters after the dot in a files name , so if you have a text file that you don't want people to see you just change it from .txt or such to a random sequence of three letters like .lol or .lky which if they are searched by type of file they can get by unnoticed , but be careful don't use common extensions like .png or .jpeg from pictures because they will make an interesting target and it's not that hard to 'crack the code' if you will .
