External hard drive backup options
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To make one thing clear: choosing any form of backup is good and it's immensely better than no backup! But let's take a look at the pros and cons of both. Unless you still believe that saving your documents on numerous USB keys is a good backup strategy (it's not!), you are probably using or thinking about using the two most common ways of backing up your data: external hard drives or online/cloud backup. We look at the pros and cons of both options and give you a suggestion on which one to choose for your backups. The good and the bad of two of the most popular backing up options - external hard drive and cloud backup. Whatever the case, if your data is irreplaceable, we encourage you to take our advice and back it up in a secondary location.Privacy & Security / External hard drive vs. Naturally, we are champions of cloud storage and go to great lengths to protect your data, but you can also take a snapshot of your data and store it at home periodically as well. Storing your data in a separate location is key. However, with the advent of ransomware and the risk of the drive being physically in the same location as your primary drive, other steps should be taken to prevent loss. If you are lucky enough to get warning signs that your external hard drive is on the decline, it’s important to do something about it as soon as possible to mitigate data loss.Įxternal hard drive loss can be preventedĪn external hard drive is great for fast recovery if your primary drive fails. Because hard drive failure can’t always be predicted, it’s important to plan ahead and be prepared for when it occurs. However warning signs do not always emerge before hard drive failure, which can mean losing important data without warning. The good news is that these signs can serve as a warning that may help you detect hard drive failure early on, before the damage has been done - giving you time to backup your data properly to avoid data loss. When your hard drive begins to make noises like screeching or clicking, or it’s running slower than usual and giving you trouble opening files, it’s a safe bet to say you are in danger of your external hard drive calling it quits. At times, a logical recovery tool can be used to recover data, but at other times, as is the case with ransomware viruses, data may be encrypted and unable to retrieve without a data backup or succumbing to the demands of cybercriminals. However, in order to recover data from an external hard drive with logical failure, the root cause must first be discovered and addressed. Recovery services for logical device failures can sometimes be less expensive than those tied to physical failures, as disassembly is not required. Logical failure, unlike physical failure, is a non-tangible failure that can be caused by viruses, power surges and malware.
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Logical failure and physical device failure are the most common types of hard drive data loss. Hard drive repair and data retrieval can be expensive and is certainly time consuming. Additionally, they’re vulnerable to other common data loss risks like viruses and human error. As physical storage devices, external hard drives are susceptible to natural disaster, physical damage, and general wear and tear that can render them unusable. Backup devices are written to constantly and so often reach the end of their recommended life sooner than normal drives. Here are 4 hard truths of external hard drive data recovery that you should consider before you trust your external hard drive to serve as your one and only data backup solution.Įxternal hard drives can fail for many reasons and it happens everyday. While external hard drives are the lifeline of many personal and business data backup plans, they have vulnerabilities that should be considered. Hard drives are often relied on for storing secondary copies of data.