DATA LOSS
Don’t lose those memories – back up
Remember ,you never have a copy of a photo / document etc unless you have 3 copies – one on your computer , one on external media or on two different brands of external media (portable hard drive , dvds , usb flash drives ) or one in the cloud.
Hard drives die at the rate of 8% a year after 3 years ( according to Google studies ) , hard drives will probably not last forever.
Data recovery can be an expensive operation , check out my recommended business page for Data Revival
When you are backing up remember that some old software on Windows XP machines could store data ( photos , video ) in some strange places.
Make sure your backup works after you have backed up.
Backup Software Solutions
Many of the portable hard drives will come with software that offers a backup solution and in many cases it will work and in some of cases it will not work but cause issues. Some software will require or ask you to password protect your backup , great idea only if you can remember the password and can install the backup software back on the computer you are trying to recover to.Western Digital just had an issue with their backup software with the new version of Apples operating system Mavericks.My advice is to format these drives before use and this should also be done with USB flash drives as well as the software on them can sometimes cause issues.
So What Are Your Backup Options
- Portable USB Hard Drives – 1TB can be found for under $100
- USB Flash Drives
- DVDs / CDs – make sure they work afterwards and you can access your data
Cloud Backup Services
Operating System Backup