Did you know that within twenty-five miles of Punta Gorda there are no less than thirteen mini storage facilities? There are also over twenty RV storage places. There are umpteen safe deposit boxes at local banks. There are thousands of two car garages with only one car and stacks of boxes stored in the other stall. Let’s not even think about attics, closets, drawers, under bed storage boxes and even the trunks of our cars. Walk into any home improvement store and there are items that will add additional shelves, more hangers, even a platform that suspends from the ceiling on pulleys so you can fill it up with treasures and hide it by pulling it up to the ceiling. We even occasionally store things at our friends and families’ homes when we run out of space. My previous move from one house to another found boxes in the attic still sealed with packing tape from some previous move we had made. It was like opening a time capsule only to look at my wife and ask why we had bothered to first, pack it and then move it as well.
We store old furniture, lamps, beds, dishes and obsolete kitchen food processors. In the corner are some bicycles that haven’t seen a rider in ten years. Old scratched 33rpm records, (for those under twenty, think large Compact Disc) half started projects, leftover belly bags that won’t fit around our… never mind. Dog food dishes for dogs that we buried a decade ago, ceramic tile from the kitchen of the house we had in…well I don’t remember which one it was. There really should be a law that says for everything we bring into our homes, two things must leave.
One storage facility that almost all folks use is the hard drive of their computer. 500 gigs, one Terrabyte, even two Terrabyte drives are becoming standard. With the advent of digital cameras, web cams, desktop publishing and online banking these storage facilities are being filled with more than just old stuff. Some of the pictures and information on the drives are priceless or irreplaceable. So what happens if a hard drive fails? What becomes of all these precious treasures? Can you spell G O N E?
More and more people are adding second internal drives, external drives, flash drives and copying files from their computers to CD’s and DVD’s. In my case I have my office PCs backing up twice a week to each other. While these are excellent secondary or backup storage tools, they still require the maintenance and yes even storage of CD’s, (where did I put that flash drive?) a spot on the desk for the external drive and constant monitoring of the second internal drive. Is there an easier and maybe even more economical way to insure we have a good, reliable backup of our important data?
Why can’t the stuff just disappear and reappear when we need it? Well, it can in a manner of speaking. There is a way to store files, music, pictures, emails etc. without purchasing additional hardware. And even better yet depending on your needs, it can even be FREE. (Martha, he said the magic word!)
There are a growing number of firms that offer online storage. That means files on the PC would copy themselves out to cyberspace (just outside Murdock Circle I think) to float around there until we require them. Then at our command they copy themselves back to the PC for immediate administrations. This works well with a broadband Cable/DSL Internet connection, I’m not sure I would try it with a dial-up.
What are some of the advantages of this type of storage? Many of these companies offer automated backup of critical files. This means we simply tell the program which files to back up and when to back them up. Now forget about it except for the occasional verification that the backups are executing as directed to. Another advantage is these companies offer the same services to large corporations and other entities for which the protection of data is critical. The same precautions to protect their physical plants, servers, backup systems, security against hackers, viruses etc will be applied to our files as well. Still another bonus is our data is “offsite” which is one of the commandments of data security “Never store your backups with the original data.” And even better, our files in cyberspace are available to us from any PC in the UNIVERSE, from our grandkids computers, or even a hotel in Oak Hollow, NC.
Take a look at dropbox at www.dropbox.com where 2GB of Dropbox for free, with subscriptions up to 100GB available. Another good site is www.mosy.com which offers fifty gigs of storage for just 5.99/m. Carbonite is another online backup service and the details of their offering can be found at www.carbonite.com. Another way to start is to search for “online storage” in the search engine of your choice. It appears that storage in the fifty gigs range runs approximately $6 per month. I suspect very few folks out there have more than fifty gigs of data to store, but some of the local businesses might find this a very economical alternative to buying backup and storage hardware/software and paying to have it maintained and replaced on a regular schedule.
Time to go clean out the garage and make room for more STUFF!
More articles just like this one can be found in my new book, Grumbles from the Keyboard. It can be purchased from Amazon.com or from www.grumblesfromthekeyboard.com
But life isn’t all serious computer stuff either. Take a look at my new book Epicuria: Adventures That Really Cook! for a whimsical read and some great recipes as well. Invite some friends over for dinner, serve one of the meals in the book and tell them they are enjoying a computer geeks food. That should bring some interesting expressions to their faces. Have your camera ready when you tell them.
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Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer (9781467985895): Courtland Nederveld: Books
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Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks! (9781456561734): Court Nederveld: Books
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