Establish your own data protection act
A reliable back-up system will prevent losing important information – at home as well as at work
 Safely storing data is all too easy to put off, but should not be neglected. While most people at work will have an IT department that will have back-up systems in place, you will also need to safeguard material on your home computer or laptop. If you are self-employed, studying or writing a book, losing data could be catastrophic.
Even if you do back up regularly, it is worth reviewing how often you do so and where you back up to. This will depend on how important the material is to you. If you think you have nothing of importance, think again. E-mails, financial information, photo and music files, records of job applications and other correspondence are all too precious to lose.
One significant threat to data is technical, for example when your computer or a key part of it, such as your hard disk, fails. Viruses and software failure can also bring your system to a standstill. But such physical mishaps as having your machine lost or stolen should also be considered, especially if you use a laptop.
| How Data Dies |
| Hardware failure |
42% |
| Human error |
30% |
| Software corruption |
13% |
| PC viruses |
7% |
| Hardware destruction |
3% |
| Other |
5% |
| Source: www.backup.com/index.htm |
External hard drives
Many people find that buying an external hard drive and regularly copying data across suits them. This can either be done with the software that comes with the drive, or you can get a package like Norton Ghost, which takes a copy of everything on your computer, and can also back up onto other media. These systems can either be run on an ad hoc basis, or you can programme the device to back up at regular intervals.
This will certainly help you if your computer suffers a hard disc failure (which can happen with no warning), but it is not a panacea. If you get burgled, the intruder may take a fancy to the hard drive as well as to your machine. It will also be as vulnerable as your computer to fire and flood.
Disc storage
Copying material onto CDs or DVDs means you can keep the discs off site. As they are cheap, portable and resilient, you might have one set in another room at home, and keep a spare set at work, or with a friend. Do remember to put them in sleeves to protect them from scratches. Floppy discs hold much less data and are also more fragile.
Web storage
Smaller amounts of data can be uploaded onto the Internet. There are services available such as Plaxo, for Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or other personal data managers, or if you have your own website, you could store material in a password-protected area.
Data Storage Capacity |
| Floppy disc |
1.44Mb (megabyte) |
| Zip disc |
100–750Mb |
| CD |
650Mb |
| DVD |
4–17Gb (gigabyte) |
| Hard drive |
up to 400Gb |
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| If these file sizes don't mean much, a high-resolution photograph from a five megapixel digital camera might be 1–2Mb, a song on your iPod 3–4Mb and a feature film 400–500Mb |
Portable storage
Files can also be kept on your portable digital assistant (PDA) such as a Palm or iPAQ, or on an iPod, PlayStation Portable (PSP) and increasingly on a mobile phone. But you are unlikely to fit all your files on a portable device, especially if they are bulky or you have numerous music, photo or video files. And finally, don’t neglect to save your emails. Outlook or Outlook Express files can be a bit fiddly to find, but will probably be under WINDOWS on your C drive. So when you do locate them, bookmark them or make a note of their location for next time.
By Joanna Pegum
SCI Web Editor
| Webwatch: Foreign language dictionaries |
 However much of a linguist you are, it is just possible you may not have dictionaries for Japanese, Swahili, Indonesian and Finnish at your fingertips. Freedict.com (www.freedict.com) has all these and more, including the more usual French, German, Spanish and Italian.
They are not nearly as comprehensive as bound copies, but can be handy to look up the odd word from your desk. The dictionaries work both ways – for example from French to English as well as from English to French – and both English and American spellings are given. The site also includes Danish, Dutch, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish. The rather puzzling ‘African’ option refers to Afrikaans (just one of over 2000 languages on the continent). There are no options for translating any of the languages into anything other than English – for example German to Japanese is not possible.
Unfortunately, the site does come with annoying pop-up ads and flashing banners. |
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