|
Backup Your Media! If you’re like me, you’ve accumulated a an amazing amount of media on your various systems (including your home media server). iTunes music, movies, TV shows – as well as ripped CD’s, family photos, and home movies. All stored on the main home computer, or, if you’re more advanced – on a home media server. While this makes the data easy to find and use, it also makes it vulnerable. Without a solid backup system that you use often, all of your important media could be wiped out by a power surge or lightening strike. Luckily, you have alternatives. There are many different ways to backup your data – I’m going to touch on a few: DVD’s
Most computers today ship with a built-in DVD writer (burner). The standard DVD writer can burn CD’s up to 4GB (8 GB with a multi-layer writer) of data. While this may seem like a huge amount of data, it can be limited. Sure, if you’re just backing up photos – a DVD writer may do the trick. However, if you start adding much music (iPods can hold 160GB now) or movies – those DVD’s can fill up quickly. What’s more, DVD’s have not been proven for long-term storage. In fact, some inexpensive DVD media has been known to deteriorate over a relatively short period of time. Tape Drive
Yes, it’s still possible to backup data to a tape drive. The benefits of a tape drive are large storage capacities – and long data life. The drawbacks are the fact that it’s a tape drive – which can be prone to errors, and is sometimes hard to configure. While most backup software will recognize a tape drive, it’s usually not the best solution for home media. External Hard Drive
Probably the most popular option today. An external hard drive can hold as much data as most in-system drives. Drives with capacities over 300GB are relatively inexpensive, and their easy to configure and use. When shopping for an external, always go with a name brand. Something with a Hitachi, Samsung, or Seagate drive will give you the best long term performance. There are drawbacks to the external drive: drive failure. Yes, any time you put ‘all your eggs in one basket’, there is a risk of hard drive failure – and you can lose all of your data. This brings me to the final and most robust option. RAID Array
RAID has been a common fail-safe data backup system for many years. Until recently, it’s only been used in the Corporate or Business IT environment. Traditionally, a RAID system required very specialized hardware and software, and professional configuration and maintenance in order to function properly. Lately there have been several products released that provide RAID functionality, without the complicated configuration and hardware. One of the best is the DROBO system, from Data Robotics. This system uses standard Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives to create a RAID array automatically. Drobo will even automatically update itself when you install a new drive. This means that your data backup system will grow whenever you need it to. As soon as I can, I’ll be ordering this system. --SW |
