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Backing Up The Computer Essay

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Backing up our data is something we are all supposed to do, right? But do we all have a backup? If your answer is anything other than “yes”, then that is a wrong answer. No hard drive is immune to fail and no data is unimportant. At my work in IT, I have had several instances, where people spill water and soda on their computer, drop it to the floor or just mess up their operating system. Worse, they do not have the backup. All the pictures, videos, music, class assignments, tax documents, you name it, lost. There is no way to predict future. At some point, our hard drive may just start malfunctioning, natural disaster may strike or our hard drive might just get infected by cyberattack. What would you do if someone steals your computer and …show more content…

The first commercial organization to purchase a computer was an insurance company. Example of earlier form of data storage technologies were punch cards. Punch card technology was cheaper but tape and disk technology soon took over the market with ability to store much larger data in compact form while still being cheaper and faster. Magnetic tapes were however, not without problems. As the book Concise Guide to Databases states, “The tape and the recording heads are in contact with each other which means over time both wear with increasing read/write errors as they get older. It also means tape heads have to be cleaned on a regular basis. Although less bulky than cards, they are still bulky and prone to damage. Sequential access limits the applications it can be used for.” This suggests that there was still a room for improvement for magnetic tapes. Sequential file processing meant there were strict cutoffs: times when no updates could be accepted! Univac and IBM competed to develop the first database that did not use sequential links for records. Today we have an option for solid state drives which are less prone to damage and are more reliable and efficient form of data storage. Cloud backup is also easy to use option and physical damage proof. An organization should consider following principles for an effective backup system: confidentiality, compliance, integrity and availability.

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