PCFIX:
Q: PCFix, what is the best way to store my data
(documents, photos, music & videos) so as to prevent data loss due to
crashing? –Amodu O.
Answer:
Amodu, the issue of storage in technology is an ongoing
debate, and the journey towards perfection is a long, arduous and seemingly
impossible undertaking. The analogue world was plagued by friction and other
fundamental laws of nature; the digital world is plagued by the speed of
electrons as they travel through metals and semi-conductors. Enough with the
geeky talk already, let’s get right into it.
We have quite a number of technologies that allow us to
store and retrieve information in either analogue (in the case of
vinyl/gramophone, cassette, punch cards, magnetic stripe cards) or in digital
(in the case of Compact Discs, Solid State Drives) formats. Let’s take a look
at the digital mode of storage in this discuss.
The magnetic storage media was successful for many
decades and until recently was the de facto storage medium in the information
technology industry. When Apple released its revolutionary music device, the
ipod, back in 2001, it shipped with a miniature, proprietary magnetic hard disk
drive that housed the dizzying amount of songs that Apple promised.
The drag for magnetic storage devices (hard disk, floppy
diskette, zip drives, magnetic tape drives) is that they are susceptible to data
loss when a magnet is brought close to it. The granules which are arranged on
the plate is rearranged haphazardly by the magnet and thus results in
(sometimes expensive) data loss. If your magnetic device experiences shock due
to a fall, there is a high tendency that you will experience data loss. This is
a major drag and requires regular backups to other (magnetic) drives.
Then the breakthrough came in the form of optical
storage; this was packaged in the form of compact discs [CD], and digital
versatile discs [DVD]. While the magnetic storage media journey started with
tens of kilobytes in storage until the gigabytes, the optical storage media
started with hundreds of megabytes and currently is in the tens of gigabytes on
a single disc.
The drag with optical media is that the data is stored on
a coating that is on one side of the disc; hence, if anything scratches the
coating (where the label is), then, data loss has already happened. While the
magnetic media deals with specialized heads reading the magnetic information
off discs, the optical media makes use of a lens that makes use of a powerful
laser to read the information etched/burned/written on the disc. If an optical
storage medium falls, unless there is a physical break, or a significant scratch
on the coating/label your data is usually intact.
A new technology called flash storage gave rise to solid
state drives. These are neither magnetic nor optical storage technologies, but
makes use of integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently.
These are less susceptible to shock through falls, but when any of the chips
onboard breaks, data is lost. So, the journey to find the perfect storage
medium continues.
However, to answer your question, redundancy came into
the picture. This is a setup whereby multiple storage devices are programmed to
mirror each other, such that when one of the hard drives fail, the others will
kick in, and there would be no down time due to the failure and replacement of
the faulty component. This is the technology used by all the online storage
companies all over the globe. They do this on a grand scale and that enables
them to serve billions of users without so much as a grunt.
The best place to store your data is in the cloud; there
are tons of services available for free, and all they want are your digital
creations. YouTube is the de facto for videos, Sound Cloud for audio / music,
Flickr / Instagram for photos, Google Drive / Microsoft SkyDrive / Apple iCloud
for Documents, Contacts, Notes, Books, and more. For large files, services such
as DropBox, 4Shared, YouSendIt are all splendid services that will make your
online experience more flexible.
What’s the catch you say? You do not have to go about
with your computer or flash drives, or any other mobile storage device anymore;
all you need is an internet connection and you have access to your entire
digital library. With all the gigabytes of free storage offered by the various
providers, you can get a combined storage of over 100 gigabytes!
Please send your questions and feedbacks to
mail@pcfixnigeria.com or call/text 08136829595
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