By Jon Cohen
I have recently been ask my many people my thoughts on external hard drives. Not speaking about brands or models but more about the concept of buying a ready made or building your own.
In one case you need not have any tech savviness, while in the other you need to know the basics.. very basic. But why choose one over the other? Price is a big factor for most people, in fact it is the number one factor for most people. When looking at price point it is clear that you will get your best bang for the buck with building your own. The prices for OEM hard drives get cheaper each week and you can find 1TB drives today for prices below $70.00. Pair that with external enclosure that go for $20.00 plus about 12 mins to install it and you’ve got a nice 1TB external backup drive for under $100.00. Great right? Well yes and no, yes it is a great price but you need to watch out for the trap that most consumers fall into, that would be buying too small or too big. You don’t want to end up wishing you would have bought a larger size a month after. Cause then you will either go out and buy an additional OEM drive or you will buy another kit. Thus ending up with two external drives rather then just one, one which you needed originally. It is hard to figure out what the right size drive is for your needs because lets face it we keep creating more data. From digital pictures to movies, and documents too we are faced with a never ending, continuously growing collection of data. Data that continues to become more and more important to you as it grows. Most people underestimate the amount of data they have to backup. So this best rule to keep in mind is that if you can afford to go to the next capacity up (so from 1TB to 1.5TB) it is worth it. So, do it right the first time and keep backing your data up.
By Jon M. Cohen
Data is important to most people, but when the idea of backup is discussed, many are always confused on how to backup their data correctly. In the next few paragraphs I will reveal 3 of the biggest mistakes people make based on my experience.
When we look at today’s computers vs. computers in the past 5 years, we see that a lot has changed. From size and speed to price and storage, the greatest changes in what average consumers get on new computers are the size of hard disc drives. 5 years ago a 10 or 20 Gigabyte hard drive was standard. Most people didn’t have a second thought when it came to the amount of data that would be needed in the future. Over the last number of years we have seen an explosion of data. Now on average most consumers own at least some type of digital camera and portable music player. With the introduction of these devices the desire to create and download content is great. From downloading music files, videos, or creating photos of your friends and family; either way you slice it, one can agree that the need for large capacity hard drive should be top of mind today.
The first thing people think is that one back up is enough. This is a mistake. I believe that if you don’t have it backed up on two separate pieces of media then you might as well not back up. Therefore, always have a backup of your backup. Sounds like common sense but too many people believe that one copy is enough.
The second point is not to trust that the computer or software is 100% foolproof. All computers have issues and all software has issues. This doesn’t mean that it won’t work all the time; it just means that sometime issues arise and when they occur you need to be prepared. The best way is to test your backup system at least once a month. Some simple ways of doing this are by looking at the files backed up and making sure they match the bit and file sizes that you have on the original computer. If you have an extra computer sitting around, you can try to reload your backup on that computer, but be aware it is a long process.
The third point to remember and try to avoid is keeping all your backups in the same location. I always suggest to people to have one of the backup copies of your home machine at your office or at a friend’s house and likewise keep a backup copy of your office data at your house. Some of the smartest choices are to use a fireproof safe to store the drive. As well, if you are going to keep it out in the open then a lock on the drive will detour someone from robbing you.
Over the next number of years we know that one thing is for certain, the amount of data that we create or need to keep will increase, and it is more then reasonable to assume that this data will be ever more important and valuable to us; therefore, finding the right solution to backup your data is key. No matter what you decide to use to backup your important data just keep these three concepts at the top of your mind and try to not make the same mistake that so many others have made before. I leave you with this final thought; you can never have too many backups.