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It is a fear that every individual who has toiled in front of a computer knows very well. After spending days, even weeks on a single project and finally finishing it (or so you thought), it suddenly disappears. Gone are the days of my dog ate my homework excuse, it has now morphed into my computer crashed and my files are all gone excuse. Be it the truth or a mere excuse for laziness, not being able to submit any output is everything but pleasant.

Data Loss: Inevitable

It happens to everyone. This is not isolated to a single nationality, race, or political affiliation. Even with this information, fact still remains that only a few individuals attempt to protect themselves from such threat. Most people fail to realize that the product of their blood and sweat (and sometimes tears), is represented in their hard drives by a few million ones and zeroes, which can easily vanish at any given time.

The Unending List of Excuses

The excuses that one can come up for not backing important computer files only show the depth and scope of his imagination. Among the variety of excuses, the frequent reason for not backing-up files is that the people simply do not have the time and patience to save and save their data yet again using another medium. It would seem that backing-up important data (in case something happens to the original document) is not really a choice one often makes.

But to be fair, there are those that would be more than wiling to back-up their files. But unfortunately, their financial standing dictates that an additional hard drive is not an option. Then there are the few who perceives such task as tedious and time consuming. In their point of view, manually copying hundreds, if not thousands, of files and data is but a waste of time. How can securing important data in an alternative location be a waste of time?

Simply put, there is not a single legitimate excuse for not backing-up computer files. Actually, one need not purchase expensive hard drive or flash drive for back-up purposes. The market sells flash drives amounting to less than twenty dollars and hard drives tagged below a hundred bucks.

Let us face it, we do not have much important files saved in our primary hard drive. And with this raised, opting for the basic flash drive will provide sufficient storage and security. Since there aren*t a lot of files, weekly back-ups will not be time consuming. A few minutes to a couple of hours might be enough to manually copy valuable data.

External Hard drives

This is basically the same as that installed inside your CPU (central processing unit). This drive is usually linked to the computer through a USB (universal serial bus). And thanks to this arrangement, the user can effortlessly transfer files by dragging and dropping said data from one device into the computer and vice versa.

Pros & Cons

Pros: Most external hard drives are plug and play. You can just hook the drive in your desktop computer and the latter will detect the newly connected hardware on its own. As for the con, this device demands for a substantial amount of juice or electricity---a let down for all notebook owners. Some hard drives function solely with a plugged USB, while others depend on external power, usually a wall outlet.

Flash drives

This is a miniature hard drive, small enough to fit on a key holder. This works like a hard drive as well. You connect it thru the USB port and the computer will automatically detect the same. As for the memory capacity, it ranges from megabytes to gigabytes. This is portable hard drive at its finest.

Optical Drive

These are your CDs and DVDs. But with the current technology, the former appears to be vanishing in the market to make way for the more advanced DVD. An optical drive utilizes laser to interpret and inscribe data onto the disk. DVDs are convenient for its affordability and accessibility. Problem is, when the DVDs get scratched, it will render them useless.