subject: Protect Your Files and Folders With Regular Back Ups [print this page] In the western world, we use our computers - be they Mac or PC - every day. We have come to rely on them for everything from serious research to entertainment to storing family photos and everything in between. In the course of using our computers, our hard drives have amassed many files, many of which are irreplaceable. Even the most skilled and careful of computer users can end up with a corrupted or destroyed hard drive. It makes sense therefore to back up as much as possible as often as possible.
There are several means of backing up your digital data to protect it from complete loss.One method of backup is to rewritable discs. This is ideal for saving your personal works like family photos, school work, poetry...etc. Anything that is not too sensitive and doesn't need to be immediately available all the time can go to a disc. Rewritable discs are rather large these days, ranging in the gigabytes. You can buy them in packs of 50 or more for fairly cheap, and all modern desktop systems come with disc burning capability. Just remember to label the disc with a marker that wont rub off, and keep track of your discs. Put them all in one place then just find the one you need when you need it.
Another means is an external hard drive. These connect to your computer via a USB cable, and can perform automatic backups of your data. Different ones work differently, so make sure you RTFM (read the free manual). These can be fairly cheap as well for what you're getting. I've seen Terabytes external backups for as little as $50, but you might have to shop around a bit. Read some reviews.
For something a lot more mobile, you might consider a USB key. The largest I have seen was ten gigabytes, which is quite a bit of storage. Some are more secure than others, but I would not recommend putting your sensitive data (credit card number, social security number...etc) on one of these. If it gets lost or stolen, it could be only a matter of time before someone wreaks havoc on your identity.
Some online back up services, like Mediafire.com, are intended as just that. It's a free service that I use to back up images and short video clips. There are others out there, like Microsoft Skydrive.
There are other services like Flickr, which are meant more as media sharing sites, but you can customize it according to how public you want your files to be.
Let's not forget ye olde email. One of my favorite tricks is to create an account just for sending backups of small files as file attachments to my self. If you use Gmail, you can then search according to the name of the file, or the content of the message body or the content of the subject line. Very handy.
Given that any server can be hacked, I would not recommend online backups for your sensitive information
Protect Your Files and Folders With Regular Back Ups
