It may be helpful. Consider online backups for your important digital documents

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

While I don't care too much about losing normal documents from the computer I can get really "anal" about backing up my photos. These are the only personal records from the past which I do care about. With the current price of hard disks (3TB cost around 100 Euros) an extra backup is certainly not a luxury item. One of them I keep inside the washing machine, not to hide it from burglars, but because that is the most well protected place in our house regarding fire hazards. Another one lives in my mother's place in Italy. I only delete the photos from my camera when I have at least two copies on different hard drives.

Recently I attended a lecture of Prof. Harald Lesch (an astronomoer who has some popular science programs on TV in Germany) about the dangers of our digital future. One of his main concerns is the voracious demand for electricity of all those on-line cloud servers. Right now their power consumption has already surpassed that of the entire country of Denmark. This is one of my reasons for not using online storage, the other is my total lack of control. If the provider goes bankrupt, my data are lost overnight. My backup hard drives consume power for a couple of minutes every week and are off the rest of the time. I much prefer this.

Regards
Max