Blue Screen of Death
Avoid losing your hard work by backing up your files to an external SSD (Solid State Drive) or HDD (Hard Disk Drive). Also, keep your computer and external SSD or HDD in separate locations for added redundancy.
Last updated February 2019
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Don’t think a computer malfunction could happen to you? I wish I was that invincible. It’s inevitable in your career. Sure, computer hardware components have gotten much better in terms of reliability, but there is still a risk that you need to mitigate. That is, the risk of losing some or all of your data you worked so hard on.
How do you mitigate this risk? You need to store your files on a physical drive or in the cloud. If you don’t know what the cloud is, it’s not a physical cloud in the sky. You were ready to fly up there, weren’t you? The cloud is a giant, remote data center with tons and tons of servers and lots of memory. I’m talking petabytes, sometimes even exabytes of memory storage, that are ready for customers to use to store their files. You simply transfer your files via the Internet and it will end up in one of these remote data servers which can then be retrieved whenever you like. I am reluctant to say securely since there have been data breaches of these data centers. Also, the term “whenever” might need to be used loosely since the entire data center could shut down due to a power outage or server malfunctioning. That’s almost never the case though, as these data centers heavily invest in redundancy to keep your data available and keep their customers from leaving.
If you don’t want to leverage the cloud, there’s another great option. You can store your files on an external USB drive, solid state drive (SSD), or hard disk drive (HDD). If you’re storing a lot of data, then I would suggest getting an SSD or HDD. The price of them is going down drastically and their data storage and transfer rates are increasing exponentially. For example, you can purchase a 500 GB SSD for around $100. And for half that price, you can get a 1 TB HDD. That means you could store up to 2,604 images with a 6000 x 4000 resolution (assuming 8 bits per pixel) on a SSD and 5,208 images on a HDD!
How do you choose between a SSD or a HDD? This is a very debatable topic. It really depends on your budget and how much data you need to download at a time. If you have a temper and throw things, I would recommend a SSD as it has no moving parts compared to a HDD. This means that a SSD is much harder to break. A HDD uses a small needle and a rotating, magnetic disk which could easily break upon contact with whatever you’re throwing it at. As far as price goes, a HDD is much cheaper. You can get one for half the price of a SSD and with twice as much storage. Another deciding factor is speed.
For a SSD, there are different transfer rates, which is usually measured in megabytes per second (MB/s), for read and write operations. Reading a bit is faster than writing a bit to memory. Usually the manufacturer will just say something like “up to 540 MB/s transfer speeds.” This is the read speed, while the write speed is a little bit slower. For a HDD, you’re typically given the revolutions per minute (RPM) since it is a spinning disk drive. The common ones are 5,400 and 7,200 RPM. The actual transfer rate can vary depending on the size of the data and if it’s fragmented (data in different regions on the disk). Still, the transfer rate of a HDD is nowhere near that of a SSD. To give you a quick example, let’s say I want to save 5 GB of data to a SSD with a transfer speed of 540 MB/s. Theoretically, this will take 9.26 seconds. If I want to transfer the same amount of data to a HDD with a transfer speed of 120 MB/s, this will take 41.67 seconds. A substantial difference in a time-critical application!
I also mentioned something about redundancy. I like to keep my laptop and physical drive in two separate locations to avoid losing them both at the same time. For example, if a fire were to start, you’d lose both if they were in the same location. At least try to keep your physical drive in a fire-proof safe if you don’t have two separate locations.
What did we learn?
- There really is no excuse not to have a backup of your files. Get in the habit of backing up your files once a day or every other day. You can even set it up to do it automatically.
- The deciding factors for choosing a SSD or HDD come down to cost, speed, and durability.