Since the concept of cloud computing became mainstream, dozens of businesses have stopped storing and transferring data using regular portable or fixed devices. Services like DropBox, Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s SkyDrive have almost completely stopped the use of hardware to store and transfer data. However, there are situations where the use of this portable software may be inevitable.
Removable Devices Enhance Your Data Security
When you rely on portable hardware for data storage, it becomes easy to compromise your data through viruses and other malware, hence the need for device control to allow for data encryption. There are data encryption technologies which are available to prevent the portable devices from being hacked into, compromising your data. The encryption processes include:
- Password protection
- Access codes
- Data recovery plans
USBs or External Hard Drives?
When they first started being used, they were hailed to be the future of data storage because it was a shift from being able to store 126 MBs of data on a floppy disk to storing as much as 1GB of data on the drive. USB drives are still around, and they are awesome for offline peer-to-peer file transfers. External hard drives act much the same way but have more storage capacity. Both devices make great storage options when you want to transport data from one point to another, like when you want to take some files home and work on them from there.
Memory Cards
Memory cards have been popularized by mobile technology. The older versions of mobile phones did not have enough internal memory to handle large volumes of data. They, therefore, ended up needing backup from a memory card that could carry a lot of the extra data. Memory cards are still useful when you need to carry important files, such as photos from a digital camera or music from one mobile device to another. They help to transport data to other destinations and devices altogether too. They can come in handy as a quick backup source as well.
Smartphones
This is a relatively new but very popular way to store and transfer data from one point to the other. In cases where you find yourself without a USB drive or a memory card, and you still need to carry a PowerPoint presentation from your office to the boardroom, you can use the internal memory of a smartphone. This will be hooked to the projector using a cable, and the presentation can continue without a problem.
When transferring data, make sure you check the carrier for possible viruses as this could corrupt your files and ruin your data transfer process altogether. If you or your employees are having quite a few IT problems with data storage, both digital and in an external drive of some sort, contact us. We can provide your company with expert IT management so you can focus on the more important things for your business.