Back to School: Your Data…
So you’ve picked out the computer you are going to have for the next 4 years. In an ideal world, you would just use that computer, store all your documents on it, and live happily ever after. In reality, you will end up in the computer lab, on your friend’s computer, on the library computer, and in the worst case, your hard drive will crash along with all your papers for the semester.
For these reasons, you need to have a scheme for protecting your data from loss and have consistent access to your needed data.
Kickin’ it old school…
You are more than welcome to carry around 3.5″ floppy disks with you, but it could get inconvenient when you find that hardly any computers have those disk drives on them. A better bet is a USB thumbdrive. USB slots on a computer are ubiquitous and thumbdrives are cheap. If you are carrying a limited amount of data, you could probably find an 8Gb or larger flashdrive for less than $20 by digging through some deal sites.
The big downside is that if your flashdrive gets left in the computer you are using or you lose it out of your pocket, it is gone. You certainly should keep back ups of all your data and you should definitely encrypt the drive with a program like TrueCrypt. That way if anyone gets their hands on your drive, they can’t access any of your data. The last thing you need is a classmate turning in YOUR paper with THEIR name on it.
Drop it like its hot…
I’ve discussed Dropbox before so this will be cursory. Dropbox ties the files on multiple computers together. As I mentioned, I use it to sync my music between my media center PC and the laptop. For a college student, the most useful aspect would be the web interface. After you’ve dropped your files in your Dropbox, you can head to campus, open the Dropbox website, sign in, and view all the files on the web that had been added via Dropbox in your dorm room.
If you want to try Dropbox, be sure to use this link to get it.
Use what you’re paying for…
When you head to college, you pay a lot of money for a variety of things. One of the things is web storage space on your schools network. Be sure to take an intro-level class on building websites so you can have your own public site (including a link to The Digitante of course) and a private site that can hold copies of any important files you might need while out.
Back it up…
The last thing on your mind when running out the door, late for class AGAIN, is whether you have appropriate backups of all your data. It is amazing how quickly backing up becomes a priority when you switch on your computer and find that nothing happens. The rush of panic could have easily been squashed if you had full, regular backups of all your data.
The most popular forms of online backups are Carbonite, Mozy, Amazon S3, and BackBlaze. Out of those, Carbonite seems to be the most popular. I haven’t personally tried any of them since I back up my data at home on an external hard drive which is much cheaper than any of the online backup services, but it is also kind of risky in the event my house were to burn down. My data isn’t all that important. Those of you working on term papers and theses might have career changing data.
Don’t get caught without your data
Following these steps, you will have access to your data whenever, wherever you need it.
If you need help getting your data setup and portable, let The Digitante know by heading over to the About page and emailing or calling.
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Hey Digitante! Thanks for including the link in this post to sign up for Dropbox. Drop box gave ME an extra 250 MB for using your link. Cool.