Archive for the ‘home user’ Category
“Microsoft – The company will officially end support Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Client on July 13, 2010, according to an official company blog post….
… Microsoft is likely to continue providing major security updates for Windows XP and Windows 2000 after ending support, but won’t offer performance patches, service packs or other non-critical upgrades.” as reported by Informationweek - http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222000858&subSection=News
This also means that your daily applications would soon be running out of there support. It’s time to start looking at new systems, new operating systems and updated applications as well. – Ralph S Gould
As we add more documents, graphics, videos, pictures and music files everyday to our systems what can we do to make sure it doesn’t lost in case of a hardware failure?
There are a few ways to approach this. Companies like BuffaloTech (http://www.buffalotech.com/) make some great Raid Storage devices that can hold upto 4 TB of Data. (Yes that is a lot of space) The beauty here is that your data is stored over at least 3 hard drives so if one fails you simply slide it out and add a replacement so no lost or failure occurs. Prices vary for what size you purchase but reasonable none the less.
There are also online alternatives like mozy.com or idrive.com. Pay a monthly fee and your data is backed up over the internet to their systems. Initially your first backup to these services could take some time but after that it’s only changed and new files. The downside? Cost, speed and retention. If you delete something from your local system you typically have 30-90 days to recover it from your online backup before they remove it completely.
Then there is always using media such as cd, dvd, or blu-ray for storage. This can be time consuming and limiting if you have large amounts of data. There is a great benefit here that its a physical medium with no moving parts and the discs are approximately good for 50-70 years. Many times this works well for sets of data like family vacation photos, client data or project data. Not so good for music files. Might as well just buy the cd’s or dvd’s.
Most businesses utilize tape drives and external hard drives for the purposes of backup. Costly as it typically requires the tape drive, tape media, and some sort of backup software. Don’t skimp on your business. IF this is your solution be aware that most businesses that suffer a major crash or data loss with n a few years are no longer in business. The stats are staggering like 80%. It is very hard to recovery from a poor backup strategy.
There are a few options but ultimately it comes down to size of data, budget and your time. I do believe online backup is the future but it hasn’t quite got over speed, size and costs just yet.
Do you have questions on what would work best for your scenario?
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