How Safe Is Safe?

There’s been an increasing amount of focus in recent days on the subject of maintaining the information in your computer secure. The provisions Back-Up, Archive, Data Storage and Security being said often, but what’s about?

Basically, individuals are increasingly holding more and more information on their servers, be it photos, personal information and finance, company data, accounts, contacts, addresses and a lot more.

What everyone should understand is the information held in your computer is a very vulnerable entity and can be quite easily and fully lost, either by element failure, malicious acts or theft. When lack would cause you distress, and then you want to take steps to ensure that you would be able to continue even when your computer has been stolen and it is kept secure.

The only definite means of safeguarding against the many distinct kinds of risks is to have a replica of the information and keep it away from your pc, this is referred to as back-up. In the event of reduction, the information can be restored to your computer from the back-up copy that was safe. A back up is composed of an exact copy of the critical information, stored on a different storage medium like a CD / DVD or an external tape or disk drive.

Naturally, a back-up is only like the previous time that you truly made a back-up copy, therefore it is common practice to create a new back-up regularly and overwrite the old backup. You do so depends on how frequently your information varies, the more adjustments, the more regular the back-up. A back-up can be done manually by simply copying the information you want to back-up to your preferred networking, or the procedure can be automated by using expert back-up software programmes. Back-up applications permits you to choose the information that has to be backed-up, when to make the back-up and in which to replicate the backed-up data to, this set up can be memorised from the back-up software. Backing-up your info then becomes a quick and easy procedure.

Many confuse back-up with”archiving”. Archiving is the place where you move information, which is important enough to keep, however, no longer required (e.g. old photos, old balances ) to an external, safe storage medium for future reference. The archived information is eliminated to distance from the computers primary hard drive.

Archiving or whether backing-up, there is a Selection of websites you can record your backup to:

Zip or floppy Disk
A Floppy or Zip Disk drive provides a solution that is very simple. The disadvantage to this method is not a particularly reliable or long-term solution and limited recording distance.

Recordable CD or DVD
If you have a CD or DVD recordable drive, then this can be a greater longer-term solution with space. The drawback is the recording procedure can be a pain as you cannot just drag and drop which you need CD’s or DVD’s to record on.

This type of backup can be time consuming, inconvenient and frustrating, based on the applications and the standard of discs used.

When utilizing this method of backup, be sure to look at the disk you’ve transferred your information to, to ensure that your computer can read the disc ok in future.

USB Pen Drives
Also known by various different titles USB Pen Drives are an fantastic low cost solution for smaller back-up purposes being easy to use and they’re also great for transferring information from 1 pc to another.

External USB Hard Drives
For most users the ideal storage solution for archiving and back-up purposes is that the USB external hard disk drive, being reliable, simple to set up (just plug in to a USB interface ) and simple to use (just drag and drop some documents to be backed-up). External Hard drives can be found in pocket or background sizes and storage capacities from a couple of Gb to 250Gb + supplying a huge sum of area that is recording. Being a plug in device they can be easily disconnected and stored separate from your computer and out of the way of harm. Some outside USB Hard drives like Iomega come packed with back-up software too.