Backing Up Your Hard Drive

Most people I know have at one point or another thought about losing all the data on their hard drive. It's not a pleasant thought and one that I had not had until a few months ago. I thought it would be nice of me to share some options with my readers so you know of all the ways you can back up your data. I thought about all the ways you could back things up and I came up with a list of a few of the most popular:

1. External Hard Drives: Easily the best bang for your buck. These are, as their name suggests, hard drives that are on the outside of your computer. Normally they would connect using a USB port (most computers have them) or a firewire. Doing some preliminary research, the most common sizes of external hard drives were between 300 and 500GB. For comparison, my laptop can only hold about 90-100GB, so if I bought a 500GB external hard drive I could back up all of my files (assuming my hard drive was full) 5 times. Desktop computers do have larger hard drives, but not too many will be over 500GB and even then, most users would not need more than that for files they want to save. The 320GB drives were between $150 and $160 at the places I looked online and the 500GB drives were between $200 and $260.
2. CD's or DVD's: These are also fairly cheap, but a single CD-R will only hold about 700MB (not even 1GB) worth of data and a DVD-R will hold between 4.7GB (single layer) and 8.5GB (dual layer). If you're only backing up a bit of information this might be for you as most CD-R's or DVD-R's can be bought in bulk for between $1 and $2 (and sometimes less). Keep in mind you would need a CD burner or a DVD burner respectively and many older computers may lack the DVD burner or both. Ask at a store if you are confused about what type of CD or DVD to buy.
   
3. Flash Drives: These are those little memory sticks that many university students now carry around instead of disks. They are typically used to transfer data from one computer to another or use as a way to work on a document on different computers (for example at home and at the computer lab at school). They are also a good option to backup data. There are many sizes (starting at 128KB and going up to about 8GB) and if you look carefully you can find some good deals. Generally you can find 2GB drives in the $40-50 range and the 8GB drives will be about $150. Note that there apparently is a way to use an iPod as a backup and that could be an option as well.
   
4. Online Backup: This is what I personally use, though some people may be wary of this as you don't really know where your data is being stored. The great advantage of this is that if your computer is stolen, there is no way they can steal your backed up files as well. A their could potentially take backed up CD's, DVD's flash drives or external hard drives and you would be out of luck. I did some research and found a few online backup sites:

• Data Deposit Box: Their site advertises a cheap rate of $2 per month per GB. That sounds low, but I worked it out. With my 20GB that are backed up, that translates into $480 a year. This sounds a bit excessive, especially when compared to the above methods.
• Mozy: Advertises 2GB of free backup. This could be useful if you only have a small amount of data to be backed up. Otherwise I would try something else.
• Carbonite: This is what I use. It was referred to me by BzzAgent, a company that lets me try out things in exchange for me talking about them – good or bad. I got a free trial and found it to be easy to use. It costs $50 (US, so about $60Canadian) a year and you have unlimited space. It does take a while to get your initial backup completed (mine took about 2 weeks), but after that, the program scans your hard drive for any new or changed files and it automatically updates your backup. The system is secure because it encrypts your data before it leaves your computer so it is safe on their servers. If you want to try it out, try the link above and if you put in the code “BZZ” you will get a free month to try it out. I was impressed enough to pay for the service after just a few weeks.

I hope this has been helpful to you. I know backing up your files can be a worrisome and terrifying experience. If anyone knows anything else they would like to add, please share and help out a friend! Remember, if you are going to buy hardware, check around in local computer shops where they will have more knowledgeable staff than at big box stores.