Personal Backups: Storage is Cheap, Bandwidth is Not

Backups are important.  Most enterprises have redundant backup systems.  But even individuals and families need some form of backup system.   It need not be expensive, and I think I have a workable solution.

I remember getting my first x86 computer and saying 40MB of hard disk space was a lot.  Then the next one came with 130MB.  And then 250MB...  A 1GB hard drive was a big deal. These days, you could get a 4TB external hard drive from Costco for about $130.  Granted, these are spinning disks.  Some new computers come with flash storage, which are still expensive.  But overall, storage is very cheap.

You could even get free storage online.  Google, Amazon, Microsoft, to name a few, all provide free storage in some form or another.  There are some restrictions, for example, in file size, or total storage, or types of files.  But they can give these away because storage is so cheap.

The trouble with these online services is that bandwidth is not cheap.  I am paying for the highest available speed from my current provider, which is 45Mbps.  They have put a cap on my monthly internet usage.  It is at 600GB a month.  Luckily, I don't stream movies via Netflix, but I do watch YouTube occasionally, as well as Amazon.com Prime Video.  If I used online backups or moved to online file storage exclusively, I would easily use up my 600GB allocation.

And these free services are only for file storage.  You can pay for true online backup services for as low as four dollars a month for 50GB and around $30 for 1TB, and it grows from there.

For a home user like me with lots of music and photos, I would simply recommend starting with one external hard drive, preferably a powered one, for regular backups.  Both the latest Windows and Mac OS have backup software included, and should be easy to set up.

After a while, buy a second portable USB-powered hard drive that you can keep offsite.  Copy your important files, like photos and music and documents, into this drive, and then store it in the office or somewhere else outside of your home.  Bring it home periodically, say, every month, and refresh your copy.

If you want, you can have two portable hard drives that you can rotate, so at least if one goes bad, you still have the other.

So, for an initial outlay of $130, you can have a working backup system, and for another $100 or $200 down the road, you can have multiple backups that you can use to recover your entire computer or just the important files.