In the old days we all backed up to floppy disks. The floppy disk has died in recent years. The two big factors in this happening were reliability and size of the files. Files are just way too large to fit on a floppy.
People then started burning files on cd roms and later DVD drives. This was done using the CD/DVD burning software that came with your writer. The reason this solutions works well is media is cheap. CD’s and DVD’s cost next to nothing. The problem with this solution is that people generally avoid doing it because this solution requires manual intervention. Also most people do not take a copy of the media off site so if something happens at your location(eg fire/flood etc) the backup is lost.
Some people like to use USB keys. The reason these have been effective is they are cheap per the size. USB keys are today’s version of a floppy disk with much better reliability. A 8GB USB runs for about $20-$30 Canadian. The two biggest problems with USB keys are because they are small some people lose them. The other issue is that most people never keep the USB keys off site away from their pc so their is no offsite backups. Also USB keys tend to stillbe too small in size to backup today’s Multimedia files.
Some people use an external Hard Drive to backup on. They come in different sizes and tend to hold more data then most types of media. They are not that expensive these days - a 250GB drive is worth under $100 Canadian. Often a lot of them come with software to make your backup a little more intelligent then just dragging and dropping files.
A relatively new option is using a online backup service. Two that come to mind are called Carbonite and Mozy. They are easy to setup, run relatively unattended and provide you with an offsite backup. A couple of issues is that these services only run as fast as your Internet connection can since they store your data encrypted on their servers. They do have a monthly or yearly fee. Carbonite for example is $49.99 a year.
In my next post I will talk about what types of Backups that you can use and the differences between them.