Information Formats and Backup Services

If you do a Web search for obsolete information storage formats, you 'll discover plenty of storage formats that have long gone by the wayside. Some of them have information on them that is, for all intents a reasons, entirely unrecoverable. If you've been in business for any length of time, you've probably recognized just how this has affected companies over the years, too.

Come and Go

At one time, computer customers frequently backed up their own files. For a while, this was done on floppy disks, then ZIP drives, then CDs, then DVDs then USB flash drives etc. The point is that these formats come and go and, if you have old floppies lying around the office, you might well be without a PC that can easily access the information saved on them. This can easily be a real issue if that information becomes necessary at some point. Sadly, information storage formats tend to come and go much more rapidly than do the invaluable life spans of the files stored on them.

Security from Harm

Some of the older data formats were extremely vulnerable to specific kinds of destruction. Floppy discs, when the basic formats, may be damaged by the following ecological hazards:

- Mold
- Humidity
- Heat
- Magnetism
- Dust
- Water

Each brand-new data format has been an improvement where sturdiness is concerned, however they're still typically very delicate. CDs, for example, can easily be demolished by heat. Dust could leave scratches on their surfaces that turn them unintelligible. USB flash drives are vulnerable to countless of the same dangers and are little enough that they are able to be dropped quite easily. All removable media can easily be damaged by forces and contaminants that are sometimes remarkably tough to eliminate.

Tape drives are still frequently used for backup processes. These are long lasting, reliable media however they, too, are able to be demolished when exposed to the wrong conditions. The drives themselves are able to even fail, sometimes demolishing the tapes with them.

Data backups that are done over online services do not have these risks linked with them. Even though you do get a wonderful backup from these services, however, you might would like to consider keeping up with your in-house backups. Where backing up data is concerned, having even more backups is constantly a good thing and being too comfy about the protection of your information is constantly a bad thing. The even more backups you have the more satisfaction you're entitled to.