So what is backup?
Creating a backup refers to making a ‘copy’ of the data (e.g. images, videos, important documents) or ideally two copies, and keeping both copies in case something happens to the original. Transferring your holiday or wedding pictures from your camera to your memory card or hard drive to free up space in your camera is not backing up – the idea of a backup is to have spare copies saved on other storage devices in case something happens to the master files.
How often do people ‘backup’ their data?
Why is backup so important?
1 in 3 people have lost digital memories and don’t even know it yet.
From graduation and holiday pictures, to wedding and family pictures, all lost in a matter of seconds. Losing digital files forever is very easy to do. We all know someone whose laptop or hard drive has failed and has lost everything or faced a big bill to recover their data.
Why does data loss happen anyway?
The key is to select the right type of storage for the right job.
USB Drives & Memory Cards: Due to their small physical size and ease of use, USB Drives and Memory Cards are the best devices for moving data from one location to another and also for temporary storage. However with their limited capacities and data lifetime expectations of only 5-10 years, they are not recommended for backup or archiving.
Hard Drives:
With their very big capacities, low cost per gigabyte and fast file transfer speeds, HDDs are the perfect day–to-day backup and storage devices. But, with large numbers of mechanical parts, they too have limited data lifetime expectations of only 5-10 years. Therefore, good practice is to also backup to a second device, but for long-term storage, it is better to save files on optical media which will last for 25-1000 years.
SSDs: Superfast and more resistant to knocks than hard drives, SSDs are great for short term backup and physically transferring files to different locations. The downsides are that the cost per gigabyte is higher than for other storage devices and capacities are usually limited.
The Cloud: The great advantage is that your data is saved in a server farm meaning that you can access it from wherever you are in the world. There are limitations though – you need internet access to get to your data, and download speeds maybe limited. Also, can you be certain that your data will always be there? And who else might be able to access it?
Optical Media: Any files that you want to archive and keep forever should be saved on optical media – CD, DVD or Blu-ray. Data cannot be accidentally erased and will last for 25 years or more, with MDISC media lasting over 1000 years!
What is archiving?
An archive refers to a single or collection of data that you would like to keep for the long term i.e. 20 years, 50 years or for a lifetime. Examples could be family photographs, wedding pictures, tax records, financial data etc. It is usually data that is no longer actively used, but you want to keep it in case you need or would like to look back at.
MDISC is a new archival storage solution that keeps your data secure for over 1000 years. Data is etched into the disc to provide permanent storage which can’t be accidentally erased, making this media perfect for important office documents and pictures that you can’t afford to lose!
See here how the M-Disc performs after being dropped in boiling water, put in dry ice and then baked in a lasagne!
What’s the best practice for backing up?
Follow the 3-2-1 backup rule!
So don’t wait till you lose your precious memories, BACKUP and ARCHIVE with Verbatim!