Portable Media, USB Drives,
External Drives, CDs, DVDs
...are all fragile
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External / Portable / USB Drive Backup
Backing up your critical data on an external drive provides only minimal protection against only one type of data loss...hard drive failure.
External drives are easily damaged, lost or stolen. Portable drive backups are rarely taken offsite, are insecure, time-consuming and limited.
1. Affordability: Cheap Storge is High Risk
- Do not rely on cheap hardware to be dependable in the event of a disaster.
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2. Reliability: Failure-Prone Media and Drives
- External drives are subject to the same data loss risks as internal hard drives: viruses, worms, data corruption, etc.
- They are notoriously failure-prone, vulnerable to degradation by the environment (oxygen, heat, sunlight, humidity, liquids, dust) and human mishandling (scratched, cracked, bent, misplaced, etc.).
- Like other magnetic backup media, tape are frequently damaged by electromagnetic fields emitted by TVs, monitors, speakers, etc.
- Since they are portable, they can easily be damaged. Pocket drives are often lost, go through the laundry, get bumped and broken, etc.
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3. Data Protection: Not Offsite is Not Alright
- Unless they are taken offsite every night (which rarely happens regularly), external drive backups fail to protect data offsite against natural disasters (fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, lightning, solar flares and earthquakes), or theft, disgruntled employees and sabotage.
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4. Data Security: Portable Media = Inherent Risks
- Where do you store your external drive backups -- a safe deposit box, a glove compartment, a purse, a night stand, or you do not know? Proper storage is in a climate-controlled environment.
- Is your data encrypted or even password protected?
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5. Convenience: Manual Process
- Daily external drive backup administration is time-consuming manual process requiring human interaction (inserting DVDs, selecting files or running backup software, labeling & cataloging, taking offsite, etc.). CD-RWs are usually limited to 4x burn speed.
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6. External Drive Capacity
- External drives typically can store all the data on your hard drive.
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7. Remote File Access: Not Available
- You can only access your data backed up on an external drive through your local network if the drive is plugged in and shared. You may experience downtime if you store your backups offsite.
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8. File Versioning: Complicated and Unreliable
- Finding and accessing specific data backed up on an external drive can be a hassle, and does not use delta block incremental technology.
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9. Full System Backup: Cumbersome, Unreliable
- Backing up your full system to an external drive requires specialized software. Recovery typically is an extremely cumbersome, time intensive and failure-prone process.
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10. Support: Nowhere to Run
- What will you do when a backup external drive holding data you desperately need to recover no longer works?
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Take a free 30-day trial and see how easy it is to backup your data.
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