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Do you back up? For many computer users, the answer is probably no. Backing up the data on your computer is akin to flossing: it’s annoying, time-consuming, and you only do it right before you go to the dentist – or have a hard drive failure. But as the years have progressed, the methods by which you can back up all those critical documents and pirated MP3s have evolved to the point where you shouldn’t make the connection between teeth and data protection.
Storage costs, be it hard disks or CDs, have plummeted. There is plenty of software out there that will automate the process, including the upcoming version of Mac OS X due this spring, which will include automated data backup in the operating system. Finally, remote backup via the Internet has become an increasingly popular option, especially for the penny-pinchers among us. Today, I’ll be exploring some of these options.
The average price of storage has been in decline for several years, at about 40 percent per year. You can buy a 120GB internal desktop hard drive for about $60 – about 50 cents per gigabyte. For those afraid to open their computer’s case, or those with laptops, there are external hard drives. These tend to be more expensive, and run a little slower than their internal brethren. A 120GB external hard drive will be about $90. Of course, the more you are willing to pay, the more storage you will be able to get. Besides hard drives, CDs and DVDs are also popular forms of backing up. However, these forms of backup are not as good, namely because optical discs have the tendency to get lost or scratched up. It’s also difficult to stay motivated backing up things in this way: It’s more effort than simply dragging and dropping files onto a hard drive.
If you choose to use a hard drive for your backups, then it might be a good idea to invest in some kind of software. This software automates the process by periodically backing up selected files and folders to a specific location. Examples include ABC Backup and Genie Backup Manager, and a good free one is SyncBack. All of these can be found through a Google search.
The final form of backup I will mention is remote, Internet-based data backup. This type of data backup has become increasingly popular, because it can be done both cheaply and easily. There are many ways to find free storage online. Plenty of Web site offer free hosting; these can be used instead to store files via FTP, or file transfer protocol. Another popular, albeit less elegant solution, is to use Web mail for storage. A good service to use in this regard is Gmail, for its simple interface, fast load times and ample storage. Finally, there are companies emergin that offer automated, Internet-based backup. One example of this is the company Carbonite, which, for a $5 monthly fee, will automatically back up all of the data you desire to their servers. The data is even encrypted, so it’s more hacker-proof.
The only issue I’ve seen with subscription services is that many of them do not support multiple platforms with their client programs – it’s Windows only, so Mac and Linux users are left out in the cold. Hopefully this will be remedied soon.
If there is one thing you can take away from this column, it’s that you should back up, and back up often. The methods to do so are so easy that you can’t afford to not back up. As college students we tend to have more data than most, and it would suck most royally to lose an important paper, lab report or music collection. Get to it.
Bangor Daily News