Preparing for the worse
No matter how careful you are, the chances are that, sooner or later, you will be caught out by computer trouble. It could be a virus of one form or another. It could be hardware failure. The worse thing to happen would be to lose your personal photo collection, your course work, your music collection or anything that has taken time and effort to produce. To many, this would be worse than actually losing the computer itself, no matter how much it is worth.
It needn't come to that. With the use of free and simple CD burning software and the dirt cheap price of blank media, there is no excuse for not backing up your important files.
Blank CDs (CDRs) will hold around 700Mb. This can hold around 200 high quality digital photos (8 mega pixels +) or around 200 medium quality MP3 music files. As CDRs are so cheap, it's not worth going for the slightly more expensive CDRWs, which are reusable. They need to be blanked before they can be reused and can't be read on non-writer drives.
Blank DVDs are slightly more complicated as you have DVD-R, DVD+R, and Dual Layer (DL) versions of each. Dual Layer (DL) means that you can store twice as much information on the DVD. DVD-R and DVD+R discs hold 4.7Gb where as DVD-R DL and DVD+R DL hold 8.5Gb. The '+' and '-' refers to the standard used to write and read from the disc. Most recent DVD writers will read and write to all DVD formats, but some older ones will only write to '+' or '-' discs and possibly non-DL discs only. Each DVD format also comes in the RW (Rewritable) option. Again, I advise against using these DVDs as they take longer to write to and can only be read in DVD Writer drives.
A typical blank DVD (4.7Gb) will hold about 1100 high quality photos or over a thousand medium quality mp3 music files. Expect Dual Layer DVDs to hold twice as much
Blu-Ray, now it gets exciting. It's the new standard for digital media. It holds up to 50Gb on one disc (or 25Gb on a single layer disc). Being new, the drives are expensive (a standard DVD or CD writer drive will not write to or read from Blu Ray discs) and slow, as are the discs. At the time of writing, a single Blu Ray 25Gb disc was selling for £7.15 and a 50Gb disc was selling for £12.80. Probably not the ideal back up solution at the moment, but these prices will come down. A single Blu Ray disc could be enough to back up most people's full music and photo collections. You could even use two or three to make the backed up files extra safe.
External hard drives are another viable solution. Ready to use out of the box with nothing more than a power cable and a USB cable, you simply drag and drop your files on to the box. They can be bought in many different sizes so you can buy one to suit your needs. The main (and probably the only) downside to this is that all of your back ups are in one place. Should this external hard drive fail at the wrong time, you could still end up losing all of your files.
Online back up, a big no no! Usually offered as a freebie for siging up to an internet package, or can be paid for on a regular basis. The companies (in my opinion) are using your data to keep you using their services. If you stopped paying for their services, there's little doubt that they would deny you access to you backed up files (they may even be deleted). Free online back up? A search on Google might find a million and one websites offering this service. The genuine ones (probably about ten) might not be here next year, and neither will your files. Play it safe and keep away from these sites for now.
What ever choice you make, make sure that you use quality equipment. Don't us cheap CDs or DVDs as they will quickly become too damaged to use. An extra £5 now could save you so much trouble in the future!
I haven't included pen drives or memory cards here because they are not designed to hold data for very long times and can be unreliable if not too expensive for the small amount of information they hold.
The bottom line? I currently use DVD-Rs for my photos and videos (they're most important to me). If I could currently afford one, I would find the convenience offered by an external hard drive too tempting to resist. Anything from 500Gb to 1Tb (1000GB) would be plenty for me (until 50 Megapixel cameras are the norm!). Long term, I will be keeping an eye on the prices of Blu Ray writers and discs. The abilities to make multiple back ups and have portability are a huge advantage that external hard drives can't really offer.
It needn't come to that. With the use of free and simple CD burning software and the dirt cheap price of blank media, there is no excuse for not backing up your important files.
Blank CDs (CDRs) will hold around 700Mb. This can hold around 200 high quality digital photos (8 mega pixels +) or around 200 medium quality MP3 music files. As CDRs are so cheap, it's not worth going for the slightly more expensive CDRWs, which are reusable. They need to be blanked before they can be reused and can't be read on non-writer drives.
Blank DVDs are slightly more complicated as you have DVD-R, DVD+R, and Dual Layer (DL) versions of each. Dual Layer (DL) means that you can store twice as much information on the DVD. DVD-R and DVD+R discs hold 4.7Gb where as DVD-R DL and DVD+R DL hold 8.5Gb. The '+' and '-' refers to the standard used to write and read from the disc. Most recent DVD writers will read and write to all DVD formats, but some older ones will only write to '+' or '-' discs and possibly non-DL discs only. Each DVD format also comes in the RW (Rewritable) option. Again, I advise against using these DVDs as they take longer to write to and can only be read in DVD Writer drives.
A typical blank DVD (4.7Gb) will hold about 1100 high quality photos or over a thousand medium quality mp3 music files. Expect Dual Layer DVDs to hold twice as much
Blu-Ray, now it gets exciting. It's the new standard for digital media. It holds up to 50Gb on one disc (or 25Gb on a single layer disc). Being new, the drives are expensive (a standard DVD or CD writer drive will not write to or read from Blu Ray discs) and slow, as are the discs. At the time of writing, a single Blu Ray 25Gb disc was selling for £7.15 and a 50Gb disc was selling for £12.80. Probably not the ideal back up solution at the moment, but these prices will come down. A single Blu Ray disc could be enough to back up most people's full music and photo collections. You could even use two or three to make the backed up files extra safe.
External hard drives are another viable solution. Ready to use out of the box with nothing more than a power cable and a USB cable, you simply drag and drop your files on to the box. They can be bought in many different sizes so you can buy one to suit your needs. The main (and probably the only) downside to this is that all of your back ups are in one place. Should this external hard drive fail at the wrong time, you could still end up losing all of your files.
Online back up, a big no no! Usually offered as a freebie for siging up to an internet package, or can be paid for on a regular basis. The companies (in my opinion) are using your data to keep you using their services. If you stopped paying for their services, there's little doubt that they would deny you access to you backed up files (they may even be deleted). Free online back up? A search on Google might find a million and one websites offering this service. The genuine ones (probably about ten) might not be here next year, and neither will your files. Play it safe and keep away from these sites for now.
What ever choice you make, make sure that you use quality equipment. Don't us cheap CDs or DVDs as they will quickly become too damaged to use. An extra £5 now could save you so much trouble in the future!
I haven't included pen drives or memory cards here because they are not designed to hold data for very long times and can be unreliable if not too expensive for the small amount of information they hold.
The bottom line? I currently use DVD-Rs for my photos and videos (they're most important to me). If I could currently afford one, I would find the convenience offered by an external hard drive too tempting to resist. Anything from 500Gb to 1Tb (1000GB) would be plenty for me (until 50 Megapixel cameras are the norm!). Long term, I will be keeping an eye on the prices of Blu Ray writers and discs. The abilities to make multiple back ups and have portability are a huge advantage that external hard drives can't really offer.