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When it comes to
backup data storage , there is very little point in having the
backup in the first place, if you are going to store it on the
same hard disk drive as the original files.
Its just like carrying
all your eggs in one basket, if the hard drive fails you will
still lose everything. The only way around this is to make sure
you store it on a completely separate medium or backup hardware
.
We have a number of
choices available to us, but first you need to decide on the
following criteria .
How much data am I going to be backing up?, so how big does the
capacity of my backup device have to be.
How fast
is it to backup, will it take hours or minutes?
Ease of use, how easy is
it to for both backing up and restoring data.
The types of backup
devices available include
USB
Pen or Flash Drives
The most common and cheapest way to backup files. USB flash
drives have always come down in price as the sizes have
increased, they now offer storage capacity up to 64gb, meaning
size such as 8 or 16gb which is enough for most users files can
be picked up very cheaply
CD
Writer
USB
Pen or Flash Drives
The most common and cheapest way to backup files. USB flash
drives have always come down in price as the sizes have
increased, they now offer storage capacity up to 64gb, meaning
size such as 8 or 16gb which is enough for most users files can
be picked up very cheaply
Cheap to buy, media is also very
cheap, maximum size of 700mb per CD, for overall cost savings
consider using re-writable CDs
DVD
Writer

Prices have come down a lot over
the past year, media has also come down in price, making this a
great buy,
Single layer drivers offer storage up to 4.7gb .
Dual layer drives
offer up 8.5gb which is great for your backup or hard drive
image to DVD, as with CDs better to use re-writable DVDs for
regular backup data storage .
Extra Internal
hard drives
This
has to be the fastest way for your backup data storage, hard
drive prices are the best they have ever been, with sizes now in
excess of Terrabytes, which can hold a real lot of data.
The only
downside to this kind of back is , you are still carry all your
eggs in one basket so to speak, although if the computers
original hard drive fails, the secondary drive being used for
backing up will be ok, but what happens if you computer gets
stolen?
External Hard Drives
External
Hard Drives have really come a long way in the last couple of
years as USB has taken off, USB Hard Drives are really just IDE
Hard Drives within a casing which converts the IDE interface to
USB.
The disk sizes can be the same as an internal drive, its just
much easier to setup, just plug in as long as you are using
Windows XP or 2000 and thats it your up and running.
External Hard Drives come in a couple of sizes you can get the
very small 2.5 inch cases which basically have a laptop hard
drive inside, which draws its power totally from the USB port or
the larger 3.5 inch type, which has to have a separate power
source as the drive cannot draw enough power from the USB port.
A couple of points to bear in mind about external USB Hard
Drives, the larger 3.5 inch drives come in larger and faster
configurations than the 2.5 inch .
The 2.5 inch is much more portable and can fit in your pocket,
also it does not need to plug into the mains. Portable backup
data storage
Lastly make sure your computers USB ports are USB2 , there are
two types of USB , just called USB1 and USB 2 .
USB2 is about 40 times faster than the earlier USB1 type, so if
you wish to use a USB hard drive, and you only have USB1, you
will have a very slow backup data storage solution.
You can always purchase a USB2 interface card, they are not so
expensive and you can get them for both desktop and laptop
computers.
TIP if your looking for a USB drive on a budget why not purchase
the Caddy or Case and Hard Drive separately and make your own,
its easy and will save quite a few bucks.
Tape
Drives backup for mass data storage
The
whole purpose of using a tape drive today is to give you a very
large amount of backup data storage space on a removable medium,
the larger tape drives are not cheap.
Anything under 8gb means its probably better to just go the DVD
route, but like I said tape drives do offer huge amounts of
storage space, but one with about 70gb capacity is going to cost
you around $500 to $600 dollars.
Summary
So if your looking for frequent high capacity backup data
storage solution with Under 8gb, the DVD dual layer option would
be the choice, then simply have as many re-writable DVDs as you
would like in your cycle .
For example if you backup every other day and you would like a
cycle of 14 days, you would need 7 DVDs , just label them one
thru seven and just follow the sequence.
If you are looking to have a very frequent live backup, say
every few hours and both the data on your Hard Drive and on the
backup device are almost the same due to the backup frequency,
then the external hard drive route would be a good option for
you.
If you are looking to create an easy to use backup template
checkout our Windows Backup article.
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