08/04/2022
Tips from the Major:
Back up your data! You have all these files on your local hard drive... pictures, documents music, etc. How much of this can you stand to lose forever? If the hard drive on your computer dies, you stand to lose everything you've got. Two things can help give you some peace of mind. An external hard drive or cloud storage.
External hard drives come in many shapes and sizes. Many can look like a regular small USB drive and can store 128 GB of data, which is 30,000 digital pictures, or 2,000 video files. If you need more than that, an external hard drive is about the size of a credit card, but a bit thicker. These are actually laptop hard drives in an external case that plug in to a USB port. Those can range up into the terabytes, like 620,000 pictures or over 1,000 movies in high definition. The great thing about an external storage device is you can copy files to it and then store it in a fire box or somewhere else safe, and then you have a backup of your files. Do this once a month, overwriting any files that have changed, and you won't lose as much if your hard drive crashes
Online storage is on the Internet. Yes, it's secure, until you lose your forget your password, or don't use a strong enough one. Storage can typically go up to about a terabyte, but that amount will usually cost a monthly fee. The good part with online storage like Microsoft One Drive is that you can save your files automatically to it, therefore not really needing a backup, and files will be up to date automatically. And online files can be accessed by multiple devices, which is good if you have a tablet and a laptop or desktop, or you want to share with family or friends.
Sounds like something you want to do, but don't know where to start? Come talk to me, and we'll work through it to give you what you need.
