5 Ways to Back Up Your Data

August 26, 2021

While it may seem like data from our devices is saved in perpetuity, it is important to have a backup solution for our digital data and to carry out data backups habitually. It not only makes sense in case your laptop is stolen, or your hard drive crashes (flash memory can fail too, even as more and more devices contain memory solutions that don’t rely on mechanical parts), but also if your computer becomes infected with ransomware. This is a particularly nasty type of malware that encrypts your files and threatens to delete them if you don’t pay a ransom within a certain period of time. Even after paying the ransom, sometimes this data becomes unrecoverable. There are many options available to those looking to back up data, and they all have pros and cons. Here are some options, but always remember: it is better to have more than one backup to be safe.

USB Thumb Drives

Small, economical and convenient, USB drives seem to be everywhere and as common as a pen or pencil. Their portability means they’re easy to store safely, but they are also easy to lose and often get misplaced. They do have a limited number of read and write cycles, so while they are great for transferring a large number of files a few dozen times, they are not great for continual use and as a solution for storing data that changes frequently.

External Hard Drives

External hard drives, as you may have guessed, are self-enclosed drives that most commonly connect to the computer via a USB cable. This means that they can be connected to, and transfer data to and from, a number of sources. These are much more reliable than USB thumb drives as they oftentimes have a higher number of guaranteed read and write cycles as well as higher read and write speeds, but do not offer good redundancy in the case of data corruption. If they are used for backup, it is better not to use them as head-end devices for daily copies. For that use case, you are better off using a NAS solution, which is covered in the next section.

NAS (Network Attached Storage)

Organizations tend to back their files up on networks where the storage capacity of a server can be shared by multiple devices (a technology referred to as NAS, or network attached storage.) With more and more households having multiple computers, the idea has some appeal for personal and small business use, especially for those looking to save files from more than one source. With prices for storage solutions falling year after year, a dedicated network storage solution is a convenient and often affordable option. These devices often support and come with multiple hard drives in a RAID configuration. RAID is a virtualization technology which enables multiple disk drives to be combined into one or more logical storage units for the purposes of data redundancy. This means that if one drive on a NAS fails or somehow becomes corrupted, your data remains safe while the other drive(s) are still operable. With a NAS solution utilizing drives in a RAID array, individuals have a period of time to replace the failing drive, and won’t experience any data loss.

Cloud Storage

While this option can require some complex configuration, such as backing up a NAS solution to a cloud provider, there are also many other easily configurable third-party options: free, paid, or free with paid extras. iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive are common options, but there are many others also available. Cloud storage takes advantage of servers which are hooked up to a number of drives, and can be thought of as remote NAS solutions. Third-party providers often run massive data centers, and have many drives configured via RAID type installations. Not only do you get the peace of mind that your data is secured in reputable data centers, the high levels of storage redundancy provide almost 100% assurance that your data is fully secured and always available. Excluding data corruption from a world-wide catastrophic event such as a solar flare, which would likely destroy a significant amount of technical infrastructure, this is the safest and best long-term digital storage solution. It also means you don’t need to worry about swapping out hard drives on failing RAID arrays, since specialized technicians in a data center will do it for you.

Printing

At first glance, it may sound funny to you - why use this “archaic” method to secure information? Despite being considerably less technically advanced, printers offer you a hard copy of your most important documents that will survive power outages and be easy to store,  with quick access even if the computer is out of service for a few days. Even global companies like Microsoft use offline storage solutions to secure their most important data. However, instead of printing information on paper, these large companies use a microfiche, a type of film, to store digital information on a physical medium which can be moved to a secure location. In the event of global catastrophe, this film can be scanned back into a computer and restored to digital mediums. To learn more about microfiche solutions, use your favorite search engine to read up on the “Arctic Code Vault” program.

No matter how you decide to back up your data, it’s important that you do so regularly - and that you consider using more than one option for your most sensitive files.