External Hard Disks or Cloud Storage – Which Is for You
After writing the article on sharing the price I paid to get my data recovered and how to properly manage your data, some asked about using cloud storage.
So, why not share a piece of my personal thoughts about the methods available to store and manage your files and data.
But first, let’s look at some ‘x’ years ago.
Flash back to the past
In the mid 90s’ and early noughties, it was when computer systems started to be part of our lives. Before systems got mobile, we all at some point had to work off a computer at a fixed desk.
This might meant, carrying around multiple floppy disks to save different projects. These were in 120MB per disk at max.
Then came along USB thumb drives (commonly known as flash drives these days) in 256MB to 512MB capacities. Again, you’d most likely to have a few of these small pen-like things for different purposes.
It was also during these time, where portable external hard disks came into the scene. These came in 120GB onwards and weren’t cheap back then.
One way or another, you might have used one of the above file storage methods.
Present day
Time travel to the current day, a basic computer system may now give a few hundred gigabytes of storage. With the file types we store today, ranging from the basic text file to large interactive formats such as videos, the space in gigabytes might not even be enough.
It would be one’s nightmare, if we do not have the ‘know how’ on how to manage data storage.
Well, let’s take a look which of the 2 options you should choose.
[Disclaimer: These are really personal preferences and opinions based on what suits my needs. It not necessarily cater to the majority.]
Storage Options
External Hard Disks
With external hard disks, you’ll get abundant of storage space. For less than $100 today, you can get yourself a minimum 500GB portable external hard disk.
Depending on a nature of work that you do, if it’s just simple Word or Excel documents and some light images, chances are a 500GB disk would probably last you a long time.
For those who work more on media (eg videos. photos, music, etc…), you would want to look at getting drives that are in Terabytes instead. A 4TB would set you back by less than $150.
If you’re working from a fixed location and won’t be moving around much, you might like to consider a desktop version of the external hard drive instead. Once you get it set up and powered via AC, you can then easily connect the USB to the workstation and transfer the files when the need arises.
Why the hard disk is my preferred choice of storage, it’s because I won’t have to worry about the limitations as to what types of files I CANNOT store on it. I could practically put all kinds of data files on it.
Cloud Storage
This form of storage usually operates on a subscription basis. How this works is, depending how much storage you think you require from these services, you subscribe and pay a monthly (or annual) fee to the provider.
Prices would range from $3/mth for a fixed amount of given storage. If you max out the space, all you need to do is to upgrade to the next tier with a higher price tagged to it.
Cloud storage services may have restrictions on the types of files that can be uploaded to the server.
Some of the widely used cloud storage services are Google or Outlook or even DropBox. Just by signing with an email address, they will give you the basic storage space which usually is free of charge in most cases.
If you’re one who has various forms of data, you might have to check if the service you are subscribing to would allow you to store them.
Security
External Hard Disks
Being something that’s portable and small, there could be occasions where we misplace and potentially lose all the data stored on it.
Each piece of hard disk would have their own lifespan as well. I’d recommend getting other disks to be your secondary storage. In case should any happen to the main disk, you’d still have the other as your back up.
Regardless of the above, it is in your own hands how you keep the disk and data secure.
Cloud Storage
Services that you subscribed should have at least some form of assurance that your data is being kept secured. These cloud services would have measures in keeping your data and files protected from any damage caused by natural disasters.
An advantage of cloud storage services is that, they’ll usually ensure data redundancy by storing data on multiple of their servers. Just in case one server fails, chances are you still be able to access the data with minimal downtime.
Parting Thoughts
It’s definitely crucial to plan and choose the right storage for your needs.
As mentioned earlier, if you’re one who deals with a whole tonne of media (photos, videos, music), and other types of data files, then perhaps the external HDs would be your choice of data storage.
For the small price you pay, you’d get the space, speed and ease of mind that YOU are in control of the data.
As for cloud storage, it might not be as fast or affordable comparing to external drives, but they could be deemed more reliable because of the security features.
In summary, it all boils down to personal preference, depending on what are you using the storage for, what you need and how you’d like to access the data.
Hope this helps you understand the options that’s available for consideration.