TIPS AND TRICKS
How and Where to Store My Data?
A good guide to backing up everything (Free version included)
In the 2000s when we first bought a Personal computer for around 10,000 rs (~$150) I used to download my songs from MP3Skulls (now illegal) and save them carefully in folders but when I left for college, I could only take few songs using a Memory card (that was sad). After that, I started collecting songs and saving them on my laptop. One night, while sleeping I damaged my laptop so badly that they had to replace the motherboard, the screen, and hard disk. I lost all my data. This happens all the time to me as I use all my electronic devices ruggedly.
So, I had to come up with a backup system for everything and I came up with one in the early 2010s (college life teaches u a lot) and used it for years and made some tweaks over the years which I use to this day.
1. Should I Buy a Hard Disk Now?
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. No hard disks. I never considered them as an option as I told u already, I have a tendency to drop things and if I damage my hard disk, it is very hard to recover the data (it has improved vastly over the years but still nowhere near perfect.) Another disadvantage is they are costly and I hate spending money on things when I can get them for free.
Hard disks are old school and they are not free. They are not fail-proof.
Yes, hard disks have their advantages like security and not having to share your data with external cloud sources like Google and Amazon. But the cons outweigh the pros for me vastly.
If you are worried about your data being stolen by a corporate by all means go ahead and buy a minimum of 1 TB hard disk.
If you want to do a system back up of the entire operating system along with files then Hard disk or online services like Backblaze and Carbonite are your best options.
2. Should I buy a Cloud Storage Service?
Saving files from your laptop/computer on a service like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft Drive or a similar cloud storage service is one of the best things to do. Sign up for a service and sync your folders from multiples PCs or a single PC and you will be able to retrieve them even if u lose the data.
Cloud storage systems are easy, fast, and protects you against all types of data losses.
Currently Google One has one of the cheapest plans and as it is google, it is very reliable and secure. I am currently using Google One. For $100 a year, you can save almost all the files including your high-resolution Photos.
3. Free Version — Cloud Storage System using Multiple Servies
The problem with the above solution is it is costly and many students & people can’t afford that. This was my college hack and I never lost anything from my college days.
MUSIC
The primary reason for my search for storage. Google has an incredible service called “Google Play Music”. This will be my favorite service if not for Evernote 😅. Nowadays, it is being rebranded as YouTube Music. Google gives u the option to store 50,000 songs on the cloud for free. Nowadays people use Spotify on the go but I still love collecting my albums as I wish to have a Vinyl collection in the future. Currently, I have 40 GB of songs on my laptop and all the songs are securely stored on Google Music. I can download the albums from Music and play them for free and as we all know Google has an excellent recommendation system.
PHOTOS & VIDEOS
Google to the rescue again. Google Photos provides unlimited storage of high-quality photos (16 MP max). If the resolution is more than 16 MP, your photos will be compressed. Google photos provide u the ability to store photos in a proper folder structure as well. To be honest, I hate Google Photos a bit as the images are not the originals. Previously my go-to service for saving the photos was Flickr. Flickr used to provide 1 TB storage option for photos alone but now it is restricted to 1,000 photos. So, I switched to Google Photos.
DOCUMENTS
The most important folders of any individual. The best free option to store your documents would be Google Drive, which provides a solid 15 GB of storage for free. Google Drive is very secure. You can create 2 Google accounts and store your documents if one is not enough. If you’re skeptical of Drive, the next best option is Box, 10 GB of free data.
Even though I store my documents on Google Drive, it is not my primary method of document consumption. From the past 6 years, all my documents are stored on Evernote. Evernote is like your personal digital vault, where you can store almost anything. It is the best software to store your documents as they have OCR and the text within PDFs is also searchable which is super cool when you’re looking for a document. It is great for taking any type of Notes. I highly recommend using Evernote when you wish to store documents and Notes.
You can organize your entire semester courses on Evernote alone. So you won’t need to use Google Drive etc unless you have class recordings.
SOFTWARES
The applications I download to install on my laptop do consume a lot of memory (~45 GB). U can download the applications in the future as well but I like to maintain the folder structure associated with all my applications. As they don’t have to be secure, I store them on Mega cloud storage, which provides 50 GB space for free.
Using above methods, you can successfully store everything online for free.
MY CURRENT SET UP
I personally never like spending money unnecessarily. Fortunately, my university is providing unlimited Google Drive storage so at the beginning of 2020, I transferred all my data to this account. Everything is backed up in Google Drive. I still organize my photos on Google Photos, Documents on Evernote, and Music on Youtube Music on a Quarterly basis.
How do you store and organize your digital life? Feel free to comment and ask any questions.
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