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| System Backup 101 |
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Page 1 of 4 To most, even computer enthusiasts, backup is considered a four-letter word. You know you should do it, you need to do it, you even want to do it, but you don't do it. When Windows crashes or that new game you installed causes error messages you didn't even know existed, you regret not performing that simple system backup. Excuses for why people don't backup are plenty, but most include it takes too much time, it's expensive or it's difficult. Well, we're here to tell you backing up, when done properly, can be cheap, easy to do and only take a few minutes to setup. 
First, let's begin with the basics. What hardware should you use to backup? Tape drives have been the popular choice for many years, but hard drives seem to have taken over because they offer more rapid data access. However, the main reason is price. An AIT 8mm 35/75gig tape drive currently starts at $300+ with media costing $40+, while a 120gig hard drive (which could hold 240 gigs compressed) is only $75, which is cheaper per gigabyte than just the tape drive media alone. Reliability, ease of use, speed, compatibility and availability are all additional reasons why the hard drive has nearly killed the tape drive market in the small office and home office (SOHO) environment, and even large corporations and universities are slowly phasing in hard drive backups. More recently, DVD recorders show promise for backups and have taken the market by storm and are currently selling for less than $100. Rewriteable media is still roughly $2 each, but 4.7gigs really isn't enough to backup much information with today's 200+ gigabyte hard drives. Besides, at $75 for 120gigs that's only 20 cents per gigabyte more than DVD±RW per gigabyte price, not a huge savings, and hard drives are far more reliable than DVD±RW media. As of late, CD-RW media isn't large enough to do much with, so that notion won't be discussed in this article. |
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