If you are old enough to remember 3.5 and 5.25 discs, you may remember times when backup tips were almost unknown to home users. Most home users used computers to play games, write letters, etc. they probably used these disks to store their work and transfer data. Over the years, as hard drive space increased, digital cameras became cheaper, computers became more widespread at work and at home, the need to back up your valuable files increased .

Everyone’s experiences are different, as is their use of the computer, but what has become a common theme over the years is the need for strong and secure backups. I remember backing up to my 1.44MB 3.5 floppy disk and having a lot of space on them, but when I was in college I found that they were too small as I had dozens of them in my drawings. So I invested in a zip drive that was 100MB. This was a giant for me and my needs. I spent several years and now I need TB (Terabyte) storage to store all my photos, movies, documents, etc. I still have all my old college work that compromised some zip drives, but in comparison, a blemish on my hard drive compared to what I have now.

I have always been a fan of technology and try to stay ahead of the times by reading magazines, reading on the Internet, watching shows like the Gadget Show. So I have been fortunate to understand the importance of backups and how to do them. I got burned in the past and lost a few photos that are usually the turning point for most people to install a backup solution.

Today, backups can be done to discs such as CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays or external hard drives, NAS drives (see the link at the bottom for more information on NAS drives), etc. All of this is fine and gives you peace of mind, but in my opinion, they don’t give you a restful night’s sleep. The reason is, what happens if there is a fire in the house, a house breaks down, etc.? All your valuable files and possibly your backups would also be lost. Bring backups online. Several NAS drives come with online backup software where you have, say, 2GB of free online storage, but to be honest, nothing beats (in my opinion) the Amazon S3 storage solution.

This is inexpensive and very easy to set up, especially with the right online backup software. I personally use JungleDisk. There are many different software packages, but JungleDisk gives me control, flexibility, cheap, and easy to set up. Before you ask, no, I do not receive commissions from them, I wish I had, as several friends and colleagues have brought this software on my recommendation. I give credit when credit is due and using the JungleDisk online storage solution and Amazon S3 allows me to sleep peacefully at night because it automatically backs up new or changed files weekly. To give you an idea of ​​the cost, I have a backup of about 34GB of photos, which costs me about $ 7 a month. Cheap as chips when I try to price the cost of losing all my photos.

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