Hi there. Do you rub your hands in glee when you visit the iTunes store everyday? Do you happily click away on your camera at every bug and every bird, while out and about? Or do you just download everything you can off the internet? Whatever you are, be it a shutterbug, a music hog, an audio snob, I’m sure you realize quickly that the the included 500GB + of hard disk space on your computer isn’t cutting it anymore.
Preserving memories, whether they be hilarious videos or precious pictures; storing important documents safely are some of the reasons why we look to expand our storage capabilities. A glance at my graphic on the ‘Evolution of Storage’ will show you that storage methods and media have really changed. You agree, right?
One key element that drives the need to store stuff away from the computer is the ease of uploading (storage) and retrieval. Over the years, there have been devices, accessories, tools to help do this at varying levels of complexity.
Come, take a walk with me, charting my data storage journey over the years. Follow me as I transition through the ages with regards to storage devices and options.
Back in the day, I used to really love floppy disks or diskettes. The different colors of the rainbow packs helped me coordinate my activities. I used the red ones to store games on, all the blues as work stuff, all the yellows as more games etc. For all the fancy colors they had and being the most portable option at the time, diskettes had the annoying habits of not really lasting long, they were easily corrupted by viruses and their moving parts made them susceptible to breaking easily.
Other downsides of floppy drives include:-
- Their light construction made transporting them precarious
- The low storage capacity made you have to carry many of them around to get any work done.
I fell in love with my first USB drive and immediately ditched my rainbow pack of diskettes (sorry guys). Thumb drive, USB drive, Flash drive; they all mean the same thing – that tiny stick that fits in the USB port for storage, back-up and transfer of pictures, applications, music; ALL kinds of files.
My first one was this Sandisk Cruzer. Then I bought a Kingston, which I used to death!
Other Pluses include:
- They are small and can be fun, with regards to the design choices available.
- They can hold your data from 1Mb up to 256Gb!
- No moving parts, so they generally last longer.
- Some models have dual capabilities of data storage and being able to store and play back music. Many of this type are used by companies for promotional activities.
- Most are impervious to shock and temperature changes….. just see for yourself what the Gadget Show folks did to test one.
Some of the drawbacks to USBs are:-
- Their small size makes them easily misplaced.
- Over time, their read and write capabilities are eroded.
- They are also a tad fragile, especially if the outer casing is plastic
- The data on them is also hard to protect. This is because anyone can pick a misplaced USB drive and have access to the data on it. That is unless you choose to shell out for this encrypted model from Lacie.
Now, you don’t have to buy my boring looking USBs. Here are some of the coolest I have ever seen. Here are a few really cool and quirky ones that I like.
Convinced about the cool factor? From bottle openers to minions, you can express your inner quirkiness. Some people don’t even buy them for data anymore, simply collect for the cool factor.
The update from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 a.k.a Super Speed USB (geek speak for they can transfer files MUCH faster) means USB 3.0 allows data transfer speeds of 480 Mbps to 4, 800 Mbps. A typical 1 hr movie of about 800 MB can be moved between devices in 11- 13 seconds!
Maybe you are a bit like my partner, who always manages to lose her thumb drives (which she only buys because they look cool *rolls eyes). Even if you are not prone to losing them, a USB drive may not be for you, especially if you want the extra security needed to handle really sensitive documents, files and would prefer something stronger. If this is you, you can opt for an external hard drive.
I switched to these when my Kingston had taken quite a beating, and I got tired of taping it up.
I picked up this Iomega to test out the external hard drive market, and I haven’t looked back. It was easy to connect to my laptop and swap files around. Literally Plug and Play.
While these are larger in size than USBs, they are also exponentially larger in data storage capacity too, up to 100 times more data. With sizes from 120GB to 8TB (that’s 2000 hours of CD quality songs. WOW!)
Many come with protective cases and enclosures to keep your precious memories and documents uber safe. As these are essentially hard drives, like what you can get on desktop PCs, they have to be careful no to drop or knock about these drives. Some of them have in-built anti-shock and stabilization features to save data even in the case of a drop.
While these cases may seem a more ‘serious’ option for backing up your data, you can still how your funky side by picking cases that that match your personality. From hot pink, to blue; from blocky EVA moulded ones to pure aluminium minimalism, you can find a case to suit you.
There will be times when you cant quite have access to an external USB or external HDD to get access to your stuff. What happens then? The boffins came up with a solution called cloud storage service. Other names include file hosting service or online file storage provider. The concept is far out, and I was really skeptical about it for a long time. Questions like ‘How safe is my data?’, ‘Won’t it cost an arm and a leg?’, ‘Won’t I use up all my broadband allowance in uploading the 200 GB of p…PARTY pictures, you silly person!! Seriously though; this, that and the other are all questions I had for a long time, till I started to dig deeper into exactly what cloud storage had to offer.
You may hear it called cloud storage or data backup. They are 2 sides of the same coin. With data backup, you are storing files that you want access to at a later time elsewhere. It may be on an external hard drive or in the cloud. Now, I can choose to bore you and confuse you with all the industry jargon in the world, but I won’t. There are about 15 companies including Safecopy, Mozy, Live drive, Google Drive, Carbonite, Dropbox, Bitcasa, Skydrive, Acronis, Justcloud etc that run different levels and layers of either cloud storage, data backup and a combination of both.
While I wont claim to have tested all these services, I found a really cool resource where you can compare and choose what works for you. I don’t know these guys, but they did a darn fine job of reviewing these services.
ONE THING TO NOTE THOUGH – Look out for the word ‘free’ during the sign up process. My first experience with one company left a really bad taste in my mouth. I signed up for ‘free’, but they sent 2 – 3 emails everyday asking me to upgrade. The 1 GB I was promised wasn’t easily accessible as I had to wade through ads and pop ups to get to my data. Needless to say, I canceled and unsubscribed from them after about 2 weeks. This left a bad taste in my mouth and initially put me off.
That was until I heard about DropBox. They made it super simple for one to sign up and use their service. Simply drop stuff in the DropBox folder on your computer, phone, tablet and it updates with your files-in-the-sky. HOWZAT for simplicity?!!!
I am still discovering more crazy-super tricks and hacks you can use it for, like using it in sync with Evernote, IFTTT etc. I will keep you up to date with my tweaks and the results.
One caveat though, uploading your files WILL take time. There are no wires, and neither is the device within a few feet of you (bluetooth), so have some patience and you will be rewarded.
Some more reasons to use this include the ease of accessing your stuff is unmatched, not having to plug anything into any ports, the ease of accessing data on any synced device from anywhere is unparalleled. While its sad that it took a while to start using cloud backup, but I am glad I finally found it.
That has been my journey with storage, and a look at some of the options I have used. Have you had a similar or more intense ride? Leave a comment and I’ll be sure to get back to you. Thanks for reading this and I’ll see you soon.