One important upgrade that every computer owner should make is to have surge protection. Secure protection protects your desktop or laptop computer from a power surge that can occur during a storm.
A surge protector is a piece of hardware that your computer is connected to. The protector then plugs into the wall. Thus, it is an intermediary between your computer and the power outlet. The surge protector prevents dangerous levels of power from reaching your computer and causing overload problems.
Here is the scenario:
You are using your computer during a thunderstorm. Lightning strikes and sends a large amount of energy to your computer.
With a surge protector, the surge protector senses that the power is too high and prevents the high power from reaching your computer.
Without a surge protector, high voltage travels directly to your machine, and you have to pray that it doesn’t overload your computer and have a hard time making repairs.
A surge protector can also prevent surges that occur if the power goes out and then comes back on at a higher level.
Therefore, surge protectors are relatively cheap and are the standard in computer protection. A wise investment to be sure.
The second topic of this article is data backup planning.
Data backup planning is important not only for large corporations, but also for the owner of a personal computer. Here we will focus on the owner of the personal computer.
Many people don’t think about backing up their data. Although they should. Recently someone came to me and asked if he could recover data from his storage drive. It was his only copy. Unfortunately, I had to refer them to another service provider, someone who would have to do some (expensive) low-level data recovery. This would not have had to happen if the person had kept a second copy of the data on him. There are several ways that people can back up their data.
One way is to buy some recordable CDs or DVDs and burn data onto them; of course, you’ll need hardware that can write to CDs and/or DVDs. They would probably be a good choice for people who don’t have a lot of data they want to back up. These are also nice because you can store them in a different location from the original data, and so if the computer is destroyed in some catastrophic event, you still have a good copy.
Another option is to buy an external hard drive. They usually require a USB connection. They are a good option and are usually much larger than a CD/DVD. They are also easily transportable and lightweight. Plus, it can read, write, and rewrite (overwrite) data, something most CD/DVDs don’t do. Therefore, they can save money and save space compared to CD/DVDs.
Another option is to buy an internal hard drive. This will reside inside your computer. It provides read/write/rewrite and generally large (and cheap) storage capacity. These tend to be less expensive than a similar external and faster. However, they are less mobile than the previous two options. Still, you’d need to know a bit more about hardware to know which drive to buy and install, which makes the other two options easier to use.
I think all options have their strengths, it all comes down to what you require or want. Simply put, it’s a good idea to have some backup strategy in place, because you never know how valuable your data is until it’s gone.