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The Importance of Data Backup

For anyone who uses a computer on a regular basis, data backup is very important. When you backup your data, you are storing your files on a disk or drive separated from your primary computer. In this way, if anything occurs to your computer or damage comes to your file on the computer, then you still have your data in backup so that you can restore it onto your original machine or another machine. This allows you to keep your data even if great damage comes to your computer. No one wants to have their system crash and then discover that all of their data is gone because they made no backups.

How Do I Backup My Data?

There are many methods for backing up your data. All that is required is to store your information on a drive or disk separate from your primary computer. If you operate on a home LAN system, for example, you can transfer your files to the other computers on your network and in this way ensure that even if one computer fails you will still have your files on another computer. There are also online backup systems where you can store your data on an online server.

Then you can easily download your data back onto your computer no matter what happens. You can also put your data onto disks for easy recovery of your files.

CD-Rs, DVD-Rs and Data Backup

New technology is making it easier than ever to backup your data. CD-Rs can hold up to 800 megabytes of data, while DVD-Rs can hold up to 4700 megabytes. Compare this with the old 3.5 inch floppies which could only hold 1.4 megabytes, and you can see the enormous difference. It would take hundreds or even thousands of floppy disks to equal a single CD-R or DVD-R.

The only problem with these formats is that once you have backed up your data onto one of these disks, the disk can never be written on again. In order for a CD-R or DVD-R to be read by a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, the disk must be finalized, and once this has been done the disk cannot be rewritten. However, there are also new CD-RWs and DVD-RWs, the RW standing for ReWritable, which can be rewritten. This will allow you to reuse the same disks in order to backup your data.

While these disks are more expensive than CD-Rs or DVD-Rs, their reusability will make them more valuable to you in the long run, as you can continually reuse the same disks rather than being forced to buy a new CD-R every time you want to make changes to your backup or there is a mistake on the disk.

If you are using CD-RW or DVD-RW, however, you will want to make sure that you have the proper burner and that your computer can read this format. These formats are more difficult to read than the CD-R format, and it is not uncommon especially in older machines to not be able to read these formats. However they are becoming more and more common and this problem will disappear with time.

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Walter Stevens is a contributor at Free-backup.info -- the home of the popular tool for windows online backup -- Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/backup-your-data-today.html