How to Make the Most of Data Storage Services

As data storage options become exponentially more accessible and simultaneously more complex, business owners and individuals are left to wonder where to store their sensitive data. Cloud storage services, physical backup drive manufacturers and off-site data storage centres are all competing for your data storage business. With high competition in the data storage services market, consumers have several excellent options for storing large and sensitive files today. Read on to find out where you should be storing your data among the plethora of data storage solutions available this year.

Cloud-Based Data Storage Solutions

There are several benefits of storing your data in the cloud. Whether your a business owner or an individual with lots of media, information and financial data to keep secure, then you’ll appreciate the newer cloud-based storage solutions from companies like Amazon and Microsoft. Amazon’s cloud storage solution, AWS, is a scalable, pay-as-you-go option for uploading files of virtually any size from any number of terminals. You are charged on a per-usage basis, so you don’t need to worry about paying for unused room, unlike traditional off-site data storage plans that often require renting an entire dedicated server.

Microsoft’s Azure cloud storage system functions similarly, allowing users to disregard hardware options lieu of virtual servers that scale to your specific requirements. Cloud-based storage solutions are a great, modern alternative to renting entire physical servers, which you may not even fully utilise.

Data Backup Options

While storing your information in the cloud is likely the best option for long-term and secure data storage, there’s another aspect of data security to consider: data backups. Before transmitting your data to the cloud, it’s a good idea to back it up on a local or off-site server. This is because the added redundancy of having your data in more than one place can help protect you from single-point failures in cloud servers and other somewhat unlikely but potentially devastating scenarios.

Since drive space has become exponentially cheaper over the past few years, there’s truly no harm in protecting yourself against drive failure by investing in some economic Solid State Drives (SSDs) hard drives to keep on-site. SSD hard drives are faster than the spinning-disc drives used in recent years past, and can safely hold your data for decades or longer with virtually no risk of disk degradation. You can purchase several multi-terabyte drives to form a RAID array for any medium sized business for less than a few hundred dollars on today’s market. For those who would rather not have to maintain any physical drives or equipment, off-site backup servers can hold your data indefinitely for a reasonable price.

How to Send and Store Large Files

If you regularly need to send just a few files, large or small but don’t necessarily need a commercial data storage solution, then you can easily get by with a free file storage solution. Services like DropBox and Mega.nz allow you to send and store files of up to 5GB each without charge. These sites and others offer free file transfers, with encryption and password options, for users with just a few GB of files to send or store on a temporary basis. This is a great way to send large video and media files to coworkers for prototyping and information dissemination.

Another tip for how to send large files more efficiently is to use file compression methods to make your file size smaller. This will help your files send faster and incidentally give you the option of adding password-protection to your files. Perhaps the most used file compression method is the .ZIP utility inherent to all versions of Windows. 7-Zip, a third-party file compression software, is also popular for file sharing and compression, as it contains more options for compression ratios and file security than the .ZIP utility found pre-installed in Windows.

Whether you’re sending large files on occasion, or need a permanent data storage solution, there are great options on the market today. Check into Dropbox and Mega.nz for one-time or regular transmission of singular or zipped large files to teammates and friends, and look into a cloud storage solution to make sure every file on your system is securely duplicated. With either option, off-site and on-location backup drives provide all the redundancy and security you could wish for in a healthy data storage protocol.