Yes, it’s true you really can build a viable data back up solution for your home or small business for less than the price of a decent pizza. All you need is an old hard drive (and most people will have an old abandoned PC at home or work that’s no longer fit for purpose) and a hard drive enclosure to put the disk in.
The hard disk salvaged from an old PC costs nothing. In fact taking the hard drive out of an old PC that’s no longer used is a good idea. Leaving the hard drive in the PC and just taking it the tip will only result in someone else removing the hard drive and potentially gaining access to any information stored on it.
Once you’ve got your salvaged hard disk (and a laptop or desktop hard disk will do) then you can buy a Hard Drive Enclosure to fit the disk in. These are very inexpensive items but they will come with all the cables and connectors you need and in the case of larger enclosures to house a 3.5”disk they will come with a standalone power supply unit.
The Hard Drive Enclosures, as the name suggests is just are designed to fit around the hard disk. They are in effect just “cases” that the hard disk fits into with a USB cable (or optionally a Firewire cable) to allow you to connect the enclosure to any computer.
The need to back up data stored on your PC is no trivial matter. Without really appreciating it we’re all accumulating vast amounts of valuable and sensitive and in many cases very personal data and a lot of this is being stored on our PC. If you just think about where you store your family photo’s, your music collection, your downloaded movies, your work files and the kids homework and essays – in most cases its on the family PC.
If the PC fails or gets stolen or the hard drive becomes corrupted as a result of a virus then all the stored data could be lost. The sensible thing to do is to build or buy a backup solution and follow a regular back up routine. It sounds easy but its one of those tasks that all too many people put off.
Using an enclosure and a salvaged hard disk, cost should not be a reason for not backing up your data. For example a salvaged 120GB hard disk can hold up to 30,000 songs, 150 hours of video, or 25,000 photos and many PC’s have hard drives much larger than this.
Don’t delay, back-up today!
Tags: External HDD Caddy, Hard Drive Caddy, Hard Drive Enclosure, IDE Hard Drive Enclosure, SATA Enclosure, usb sata
