Windows Data Backup Help
September 4th, 2010 | Author: aurelius
Unfortunately , one of the most important  functions of computing that is unnoted is data backups . Probably  the most valuable asset we have is our data, and countless  users only realize this when it goes missing and they can’t retrieve  it. Backing up is easy to do and very cheap too.
Why do so few users back up their data ?
Well, because  when things are working fine, users think there is no problem. But your computer  can crash anytime and when it does, you can have some serious problems . How much valuable  data is on your hard drive? Do you store photos , home movies , financial data? What would happen if you lost all of that data right now ? Take a minute  to think about this, because if your hard drive  crashes, you could lose priceless data. You might  be able to use data recovery software to fix this, but that is definitely not a 100% guarantee.
Some fast  and simple  backup techniques  are listed beneath:
External  Hard Drives
External hard drives/USB drives are becoming very cheap . This is making it more competitive with magnetic tape as a bulk storage medium. The major  advantages of hard disk storage are fast access , availability, capacity and simplicity  . These type of drives are very easy to connect and you can store them offsite too . This is the easiest way to get started with backups and is encouraged . Just copy across all of your important  data on a regular basis.
Optical Storage
CDs or DVDs can be used to store and backup your data. One advantage here is that CDs and DVDs can be restored on any machine with a CD-ROM/DVD drive. In addition, these media are low cost . HD-DVDs and BluRay Disks dramatically increase the amount of data possible on a single optical storage disk but are not as cost effective. Optical storage is good for small amounts of data, but with data requirements becoming larger and larger, it is not the most effective  method.
USB  Drives
These are also known as USB drives, flash drives, thumb drives, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, etc. These devices are extremely portable and simple to use . They don’t offer huge capacity, but they are  useful for backing up only the important  data that you require. For full system backups, you would  not use this type of storage.
Magnetic Tape 
Backing up to magnetic tape has long been the most commonly used medium for bulk  data storage, backup, archiving, and interchange. Tape has typically had an order of magnitude better capacity/price ratio when compared to hard disk, but recently the ratios for tape and hard disk have become much  closer. Tape is a sequential access medium, so even though access times may be poor, the rate of continuously writing or reading data can be very fast . Backing up to tape can be expensive  and has greater  overheads than many other techniques and is recommended for business and commercial use.
Remote/Offsite  Backup Services
As our internet connections become faster , the use  of remote backup services are flourishing. Remote backup services  are cheap and very easy to use and they offer great advantages of having your data fully backed up in a totally different physical location. Initially backing up all of the data can be slow , but future backups are much faster as you only need to backup files that have been edited. Remote backup services are great  for both home and business users. The only real drawbacks are speed issues and placing data on a third party  server that could be compromised. So always choose a trustworthy service.
Whichever technique implement, just make sure you backup your data  somewhere ! You can learn more about backups at Windows Data Recovery.
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