The computer industry spends millions convincing people they all need a computer in the house. They spend nothing helping people learn how to use them. And, worse, they tell no one how to avoid losing all their data. Meanwhile, the majority of people are switching over to digital cameras. I've had numerous people ask me for help after their computer crashed and all their pictures were lost. They're very sad when I tell them that for $500 there are companies that will try to recover their data. No guarantees. For $1,000 there are places that are almost 100% successful.
How much are your pictures worth? Or your financial records in Quicken or whatever?

There are several easy and fairly inexpensive answers to the problem.

Some people I know use thumb drives (flash drives, jump drives, whatever you call them) but they're fairly expensive for the storage capacity you get. 64 gig of storage is still well over $100 and 128 gig is over $400. Yikes. I have personally witnessed 3 instances of a thumb drive simply losing its formatting - all data gone. This is like a hard drive crashing, but with no recovery at any cost. Add to that the problem of how easy it is to lose one and you see this isn't the best solution.

There are data storage services online. Comcast includes raw storage space as part of their internet access service. Your internet provider probably offers it too. I don't like this idea at all. I don't like letting somebody else keep my backups. I don't trust their security. And what happens if you need your data and your internet connection is down? I'm not buying the new trend toward "cloud" storage.

Some people (myself included) have bought USB external hard drives for backup. This is close to a good solution. The cost is reasonable (250 gig for $100 or better) and they are as easy to use as a thumb drive. But, they are no better protection against lost data. Why? Because they're as prone to failure as the drive inside your computer. My first external hard drive (a Kangaroo) died in one year and took some data with it that was not backed up anywhere else. Argh!

So, what to do?

I don't recommend thumb drives unless you need extreme portability. What I do recommend is an external hard drive with a difference.
The problem is that all hard drives eventually die. The solution is redundancy - more than one of something. In this case, more than one hard drive.

The Buffalo Duo is a single case with two hard drives inside. You configure it to "mirror" the hard drives - save all data to both drives at the same time. Now you have two copies of your data. If one drive dies, you just open the case, replace the dead drive, close it up and upon power up, the system copies everything from the older of the pair to the new one. Now you have two copies again. This is about as secure as you can get for any reasonable price.

Buffalo makes external devices with only one drive inside, so be sure to look for the Drive Station Duo. It's made in two versions with USB interface. The 1 TB has two 500 gig drives inside. Once you've mirrored the drives and formatted them for use with Windows, you get about 460 gig of storage. The 2 TB version has two 1,000 gig (1 terrabyte) drives for mirrored storage of around 925 gig.

Now (mid 2009) the 1 TB is around $200 and the 2 TB is around $300. Places like PC Connection and Amazon (and many others) still have older models on the shelf with smaller capacity.

If you have a home network, look at the Buffalo LinkStation Mini or the LinkStation Pro Duo. They have a network connection so you can plug them into your home router (unless it's a "wireless only" router) and access them from any computer in your house. These cost $20 to $50 more because of the network interface. I prefer the Duo over the Mini because it has higher storage capacity available. The Minie comes in 0.5 or 1 TB while the Duo comes in 1 or 2 TB.

OK, so I bought one of them, now what do I do? How do I use it?
You need backup software. I recommend Cobian Backup. It's reliable and easy to use. And it's FREE. For most people, especially with laptops, running it manually every week or so works well. If you're doing ciritical work and leave your computer on overnight, let it do the work and run the backup automatically every day. I have 5 different backup sets running, using Buffalo Duos and network based RAID5 boxes, and all are using Cobian. Three are set automatic and two are manual for laptops.

Now you don't have to worry about losing your pictures or other irreplacable data.

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