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Computer Backup Options for Everyone

Most computer users have at some point in time or another thought about making backup copies of their important data.

What exactly is important computer backup material is different for every computer user.

Everyone has their own definition of important when it comes to computer data. An office worker may consider their word documents to be important, while a musician may think that their music files are top priority. Even home users have their own definition of important files; whether they be digital photo albums, or collections of e-mails saved from the past year.

In the current day and age, computer users should consider themselves lucky from all of the available options that exist for creating backup copies of their data. The purpose of this article is to identify some options for the common computer user wishing to backup their data.

Removable media, such as CDs and DVDS, play a big role in computer backup today.

The first option for users is removable media. Ten years ago, the sole option in this field for floppy disks, however today many options exist. Floppy disks are considered outdated by most computer users, as they only have a storage capacity of 1.44 megabytes.

Writeable CDs and DVDs are considered the norm today for creating backups of computer data. The drives have created a surge in popularity over the years which has resulted in many computer software companies producing software that helps simplify making data backups with CD / DVD burners.

Computer users wishing to only backup small amounts of files and have them readily available should look into online backup services.

Another popular option for making small backups of files are remote backup services. With advancements in the connection speeds of internet services, online backup services began to appear in late 1999. These services provide users with a limited amount of space on their web servers, in which users are allowed to upload and download backup copies of their data.

While the services are not free, many users find these services to be worth every penny as they can easily upload their work from home and download it from the office. While mobility is a big plus for the service, the fact that today's media files are large and can be slow to upload / download kind of make up for the mobility.

Other options in the remote backup sector are dedicated servers in your home / office to make backups of your files. While this isn't really an option for most home users, businesses often find this to be the most practical as they usually tend to backup several hundred gigabytes of data every night.

Stealing an idea from servers, some hard drive companies have begun to produce external hard drives which can be connected to a network. Users of the network are able to easily send their files to the drive, and even make complete system backups to the drives. While they are priced in the two hundred dollar price range, many users of these backup devices are declaring the systems to be worth every penny.

As you can see, the options for computer users to make backup copies of their data has dramatically increased in the past ten years. Today users can choose from CDs, to DVDs, or even external hard drives. Online services, and backup servers are also on the list of computer backup solutions.