One key advantage cloud storage has over both physical media and a safe deposit box: it can be accessed from anywhere. What’s the equivalent of a safety deposit box for digital data? Cloud storage serves as an online “vault” to protect against unrecoverable data loss. The same principle applies to important electronic documents. You store valuable documents in a secure, separate location like a safe deposit box or fireproof safe. Is that drive safe in the event of a fire? A flood? Burglary? Pet zoomies? “If I could get ahold of that drive, mmm…” Think about your backup drive for a moment: it’s hanging off your USB hub, cluttering up your desk, isn’t it? Or it crouches in a dark corner of your desk drawer. And for best results in the unlikely event you “really need the data back RIGHT NOW”, backup data should really be stored someplace separate from the originals. Perhaps you keep an external hard drive, like this one, in the drawer for those once-a-year, quick-and-dirty backup “since I’m archiving this year’s tax documents anyway”? Some backup drives only get to come out once a yearīackups should be something we do regularly.

Or you got a microSD or USB drive to plug into your laptop.

Maybe you got a second disk installed in your PC. And while you were picking up the pieces after that event, you promised yourself you’d start doing backups. Chances are you’ve already experienced the pain of losing a project, term paper, or blog post at the worst possible time. We all have it: data that would be painful - even costly - to lose.

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