Computers do more than just connect people to the Internet cloud of web pages, e-mail, faces of book, and the birds of Twitter. Digital devices like iPods and digital cameras changed how we all listen to music, watch video, take photos, and more importantly…where we store life’s media. Backing that data up is no longer an option…it’s time to get serious about data backup now!
If you’re reading this blog, you likely already are backing up. And if a friend or family member sent you this page, thank them for caring enough to help you not be a victim of the computing fun that is known as drive failure and absolute data loss.
You may be surprised how many people you know that don’t backup their home computer. Even computer savvy friends may not have a backup. The false confidence many bestow on their hard drives living forever can be surprising.
It’s so easy to bring this up in conversation too. If you see a friend using a digital camera, iPod, or know a family member who stores all the digital photos sent from friends and family, ask them what their backup strategy is. It might be a good thing to get them thinking about what would happen if their computer’s hard drive went kablooey.
The key is it doesn’t have to be hard or scary!
I like solutions that do the work for you, and you don’t have to think about. The bare minimum needed is a single external drive that can connect via USB 2.0 that you can use to backup all your files. You can usually upgrade to faster connections and more drive space for just a few bucks more than the base external drive. Much of OWC’s line of externals offers tiered upgrades so you can get what’s right for your needs and with Plug and Play ease of use. Why go external? Portability and easy installation are a couple good reasons. If you want to go with internal drives, OWC has got you covered there too.
Software Built-in or Provided, it’s all good!
For Macs, Time Machine is da bomb in my world, and I just have to give huge props to Apple for realizing the need for backup of our life’s digital media. There’s also other backup software out there that makes backing up relatively easy, or more controlled if you don’t like the complete computer backup that Apple’s Time Machine performs.
And that’s why OWC’s external solutions are perfect for Mac and PC backup: rock solid, award-winning, benchmark proven hardware and drives complimented by a $200 retail value disk utility bundle with leading backup programs…making OWC a “one stop shop” for digital media backup!
Start Spreading The Good Word!
Become a backup evangelist among your community of friends and family. Strike up a conversation, and use your knowledge for good to help save them from the heartache and loss that can and likely will happen if they don’t get serious about data backup now!
With Time Machine you can leave the externals on or off. Time Machine only accesses the drive at the time interval you tell it… be it every hour or something else.
Only the initial setup of Time Machine takes a while as it makes a full backup. After that it only backs up changes thus minimally using the hard drive at all and essentially “syncing” versus “recopying”.
I keep my external on all the time in true “set it and forget it” fashion, but Time Machine does not need it constantly on. Time Machine will simply just backup the next time the backup drive is plugged in.
The main advantage to keeping Time Machine plugged in is that it also allows you to “go back in time” to see what was in certain folders at each time interval backed up. If you don’t leave your backup drive plugged in you will miss out on that great feature. Have you ever had a “the file was there yesterday” moment? Time machine fixes that.
Sorry, for clarification, I intend to turn the miniStack units off once a backup cycle has been completed in order to stop rotation of the discs of the drive and save some physical wear on the hard drive itself. As I think about this though, I am guessing Time Machine wants the drive on all the time? Or is this incorrect?
I have been a big fan of the miniStack series sold by OWC. I recently purchased a number of units to hang off some of my machines, however, this will not account for all of my machines. That said, I had planned on turning the miniStack units off. I was just curious if you have any suggestions with respect to maybe using one external drive for multiple machines, perhaps by partitioning the external drive?
Your input is appreciated.