An increasing number of people are using laptops, notebooks and tablets, but few seem to be aware of the need to backup these computers, nor how easily and inexpensively this can be done, says Protech sales consultant Mike Dix Jnr.
At a recent round table discussion on business continuity held in Kramerville, north of Johannesburg, it was agreed that the importance of backing up portable computers is often overlooked.
"Relatively inexpensive USB portable drives in a variety of sizes from 20GB to 80GB have been available locally for several months, making it easy to backup portable computers," says Dix. "Although starting at R1 500 for the smallest drives, users should think of it as insurance for their data."
He says applications can always be reloaded if something happens to the computer, but data is irreplaceable and can be safely stored on portable drives.
"USB portable drives can replace more than half of existing backup methods, but are reusable, compact, reliable, and have plug-and-play convenience."
Dix says a typical application of the portable drive would be to partition a 40GB and use half for a full backup of a notebook and half for storage. "This configuration gives the best of both worlds."
Dix says a transfer speed of 480Mbps can be achieved using a USB2 connection, which means a 20GB portable computer hard drive can be backed up or restored in just 90 minutes. "Using portable drives for backing up data is much cheaper than more traditional, but less reliable methods such as tape drives." He says even greater speeds can be achieved with Firewire connections. "A 300Mb file can be copied in 10 seconds."
The speed of transfer and capacity of the portable drives makes them extremely useful for anyone working with large multimedia files, says Dix. "They are popular with people working in advertising and other media-related fields. Projects can be stored on portable drives and passed on easily from one member of a design team to another."
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