Storage tips and tricks
By Dean • Jul 20th, 2010 • Category: Uncategorized
- Photo: Stock.Xchng
We’ve had users ask us what the best external storage solutions are. We look at the pros and cons of external USB drives, online storage solutions and disc-based storage.
Online storage solutions
With high-speed bandwidth becoming more and more entrenched in our lives, online storage solutions have propped up everywhere. Our favourite online storage solution by a long way is DropBox. The way DropBox works is by having a folder on your desktop wherein all the files you drop automatically sync with the web server. This folder is also sharable amongst friends and other people, making DropBox a dead-simple method of backing up your files.
Apple users have access to the rather expensive Mobile Me ($60 per year) that has DropBox-esque online storage solutions with a flurry of added extras. We’re not fans and do not think it is worth it, but it’s worth a look if you like all things Apple.
Backup hard drive solutions
When in doubt, back up all your valuable data to external USB drives. Naturally, size matters, and the bigger the capacity, the better. We’re quite partial towards 500GB drives because it’s the most capacity most people will ever need. We recently wrote a buyers’ guide for guidance, as well as completed a few reviews in recent weeks, too.
Oh, and if 500GB is not a big enough storage solution for you, Seagate have you covered with their recently introduced 3TB GoFlex desktop.
Blu-ray and DVDs
The last storage solution – and the one we recommend the least – is disc-based storage. The trouble with this is discs are expensive, and take a long time to work with. Even then, if you’re insistent on going this way, Blu-Ray burners have become quite affordable, as have their accompanying discs. Buy. Burn. And forget about it.
Are there any solutions to storage we’ve missed out on here? This list, while hardly exhaustive, is meant to represent the simplest consumer storage solutions. In order of preference, we would recommend external USB drives, then online storage solutions and reluctantly disc-based storage solutions. What do you think?
Tags for this article: disc-based storage, external USB drives, online storage, storage solutions
