I have mentioned the importance of backing up your important electronic files before. It really is important if you intend to use those files in the future. Whether it is your previous tax returns, (done on your computer or the scanned version of your paper copies) emails or documents of any type you need to keep an extra copy. Today two of the most talked about file types are music and of course all those digital Christmas photos.
The reason to keep copies may be obvious to many of us, but not to others. The biggest reason you may need a backup is to guarantee that one day, sooner or later, your hard drive will fail. Hopefully it will survive long enough to grab your files but many times they are totally trashed; nada. Occasionally you may be able to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars and send your hard drive to professionals to restore some or all of your files. However, for individuals like you and me it will be very cost prohibitive.
Recently I received an email from Alicia. She asked, "I have a new 1 TB external drive. Do I use the backup software that comes with the drive, or the Windows back up application?" That is a great question and highlights one great alternative for backing up files.
What can a 1 TB drive hold? Toshiba, one of my favorite companies, says approximately 17,000 hours of music which is just less than two years of music, non-stop 24 hours a day, 320,000 HD digital photos or about 457 holiday’s worth of photos, 1,000 hours/41 days of home videos (again without sleep) or 250 DVDs of about two hours each.
The price of external drives, like all other electronics is always coming down. I found an external 1 TB drive for $80 and then a 2 TB drive for less than $120 so the cost is not horrible if you are serious about backups.
Now, let’s go back to Alicia’s question. I would always use the software that comes with the drive. It has been tested and proven with the drive you have. It is most likely made to do just that one thing and do it well, so I say stick with it. If you prefer the Windows application or any other you are used to, feel free to use that one. However, it could invalidate your warranty on the drive so you need to check that out first.
Keep in mind that there are also some great "cloud" storage applications out there. I heartily recommend Dropbox (bit.ly/use-DropBox), Google Drive (drive.google.com), SkyDrive (skydrive.live.com), Carbonite (carbonite.com) and many others. I feel that DropBox and Carbonite are the best to use for automatic backups; however, DropBox has a free version.
Make sure you backup no matter where you choose to do it. Just do it!
