With a purchase of an iMac, what is the best backup mythology...external HD, DVD, or what? Thanks.
Cost per GB is a good metric for people of means. For some, however, it's the bottom line that is most important. A flash drive is cheaper in that regard than an external, especially one large enough to make a clone on, depending of course on the size of the hard drive to be cloned.
As a former risk management consultant, let me say that cost is ALWAYS one of the criteria for data protection. The general rule is that you should spend no more for protection that the product of (value of data * probability of loss). In "value of data" you include the business loss, actual data value, potential publicity losses, etc. So, if you determine that your data is valued at 1 million, and the probability of lost (equipment failure, stupid mistakes, software crashes, theft, etc) is 1%, then you should be willing to spend 10,000 on protection/backup/etc. The formula breaks down if the value of data is infinite, but until then, it's a good rule of thumb.Cost can never be a criteria for protecting your information.
However, cost can be an outcome of the question " What is the value of the information I am trying to protect ? "
If the value is low, then buy a cheap backup media.
What I am reading above is that people too quickly jump into the " solution space " without properly defining the " problem space " . That is the world upside down.
Cheers ... McBie
Well, you could consider what the cost of ID theft is today. And that depends on your financial situation. Everybody has to do that assessment individually, but a little research should show what the average cost of ID theft is. I've seen ranges from $400 to $15,000 for the US. It depends on how quickly you discover your ID has been stolen and what the stop-loss limits are on your credit cards. For Debit cards, the limit is the balance, or the balance plus any overdraft limits you may have. That can get expensive.That is indeed a business approach where value of data is quantifiable. ( ie. revenue, missed opportunities etc ... )
Like I mentioned .... what is the value of the data you are trying to protect.
The challenge is to map that to your home usage.
I can not quantify what the value is of my private information. I can only say that I value pictures of my family more than a silly budget spreadsheet ( as an example ), so I make sure I have 2 backup of my family pictures.
But a monetary value for my private information .... I would not have a clue?
Cheers ... McBie
ID Theft is not really linked to backup, but it can be used to help you decide how much to spend on backup strategies. I brought it up more in response to your comment from an earlier post:Hmmm.... Not sure I would link ID theft to the backup question .
Backing up your ID is not helping you to recover from ID theft.
So the protection of your ID is proactive and the backup of data is reactive.
In the end it is all about semantics I guess, but it is always a good thing to think about what you want to achieve and not immediately jump into the ' technology ' area.
Cheers ... McBie
Considering the value of ID theft COULD give you some ROM estimate of the value of your private information. And with that, I turn the thread back over to the original purpose...But a monetary value for my private information .... I would not have a clue?
I don't follow that reasoning - at all - and I use both external hard drives and flash drives.
Cost of flash drives are approximately $10 for every 16 GB - two 64 GB or a single 128 GB flash drive is going to run about $70. For that same $70 you can get a USB 3 - 1,000 GB external hard drive. At $120, you can find a 3,000 GB external drive.
Ah yes, that makes much more sense ...