The one thing that will fail is your hard drive. Either from a virus or from age or even dust that collects inside doing damage one day at a time. I know some of the most up to date use flash drives but they fail without notice also. You may be asking yourself how I know this. Simple, I have had several old and new hard drives fail as well as CF cards I use for my executive portrait photography business. I also have a platinum wedding band store on line that requires me to keep sales and warranty information secure for several years after a client makes a purchase.

While the flash drives don’t have traditional moving parts they do have connections and during mass production things may not always be made perfect. This means the information you must have will be on the drive that fails. No one knows why it is always the important information that gets lost but that just seems to be the way it is.

You can have a dual drive system inside your computer, which will take care of drive failure and even many viruses that could force you to delete all files off an infected drive. This may be a great system until you have a break in and they take your computer.

I can already here people saying why not use an external hard drive for back up. Again this does work and will save you most of the time until the cat, dog or small child knocks the drive off your desk or the new roof leak drips just enough to ruin the drive placed on the floor where you thought it would be safe.

The next best option is burning DVDs but that takes time and those things seem to scratch at random so plus you would need a bank lock box to keep them off premises in case of water, fire or theft. Just like hard drive failure nothing will happen until the one day you forget to take the disk to the bank and it ends up damaged or stolen.

The best solution I have found is to use one of the above plus a second off site source. While many have heard of Mozy and Carbonite on line back up you can search the Internet and find several less advertised companies. The one factor I have been comparing is length of the back up. As a photographer I need to keep photo files for years and that is just too much information to keep on my desktop and don’t trust a DVD or external drive alone. I wanted a service that would hold my files until I removed them. Most do a great job at back up but delete the file 30 days after you remove, or accidentally erase it from your hard drive. Others may accept external drive data but require you to plug the drive in before the 30 days is out to prevent removal.

After a lot of research I found a Back Up Provider using Amazon servers that will allow me to upload 4 systems or several hard drives in my desk top plus 2 external and my laptop to a single account. The files stay as long as I am a member. I can erase them from my system and they stay in my external back up. No more 30-day time frame to worry about. They offer a 1GB free account, which may be good for student laptops and 15-day free trial for unlimited storage accounts.

The back-up I suggest using is Elephant Off Site Back-up . I use it for my executive business portrait business and sleep sound at night knowing my files are secure. This article, Perfect Off Site Storage Solution For Students is available for free reprint.

Incoming search terms:

• 0rchard bank

Related Articles:

1. USB Drives For Storage Solutions Everything has changed with the way that people move and store data. USB drives have become an essential method of moving our reports, presentations and video. Gigs and terabytes of information can be carried in more compact forms. As computers get smaller so will the devices that can hold our...
2. Classified Ad Sites Can Drive Traffic To Your Site Some of the biggest and established classified ad sites are visited by millions of people daily! Generally you wouldn't really care about this piece of information, but if you are looking for a way to promote your own website, then you most certainly would want to find out how to...
3. How You Can Find The Perfect Turnkey Web Business For Your Preferences A great deal of places on the web supply turnkey websites, these sites are ready for people to invest in and start earning revenue. Have you ever seriously considered taking advantage of one of these turnkey sites for yourself? Before you consider purchasing a turnkey site, listed here is a...
4. How Installing Shelves Can Eliminate Your Storage Woes Many people find that they do not have adequate storage space for their possessions. Papers and books get left in heaps, clothing is draped around the bedroom and the kitchen cabinets need total reorganizing to be efficient. Adding extra storage by installing shelves in the home can be the solution....
5. Retail – Fresh Goods Storage And Display Advice Working in retail can be extremely rewarding and fresh produce plays a really important part in the retail industry. It's important to make sure you look after fresh produce properly. For example, when you are displaying or storing fresh goods then you need to watch the temperature or else the...