Data Storage and Backup – Keep it Secret. Keep it Safe.

Data storage and backup is important for anyone to have. In today's modern world, it seems like more and more of us keep our entire lives on our computers. What happens when your hard drive goes kaput or the cat knocks your glass of water onto your computer? If you don't have a data storage and backup plan, disaster is what happens. Post contains affiliate links; all opinions are my own.

Data Storage and Backup – Protect Yourself Before you Wreck Yourself

Our lives are on our computers. We keep everything from our digitally filed tax returns to our family photographs on them. If our computers have a catastrophic failure, and we don't have a backup plan, we're screwed. There are several ways to go about data storage and backup, and I recommend using a combination of all of them.

Online Backup

Services like Carbonite are perfect for continued data storage and backup. These services constantly run in the background of your computer, backing up everything as you go. It's an easy, hassle-free way to constantly backup all your files as you go.

External Hard Drives

External hard drives are great for protecting your important files, pictures, and documents. An external hard drive is simple to use – simply plug it into a USB port. After that, it works like any other plug and play storage device. You simply drag the files you want to save into the external hard drive window and they are copied over.

Flash Drives

Many people think flash drives are a data storage and backup solution of the past, but that's just not true. With today's technology, you can get a DT Hyper X Predator 3.0 with a 512 gigabyte capacity. That's HUGE for a flash drive. Flash drives are an excellent addition to any backup plan, because they are portable and easy to use. You can even get a drive for your phone to store photos.

Data Storage and Backup – Take the Three Pronged Approach

For the absolute best protection against loss of important files, I recommend taking a three pronged approach to data storage and backup. Fist, you'll want to get Carbonite or another online storage solution to ensure constant, real-time backup of all the files on your computer. After that, find yourself a nice external hard drive with AT LEAST 1 terabyte of memory for manually saving anything on your computer that you wish. Finally get your self a big fat flash drive and backup any and all files that you might need in a pinch, so you always have them.

Data storage and backup is incredibly important, and it pays to be vigilant about it. If you don't already have a data storage and backup plan in place, I highly encourage you to do so sooner rather than later.