Norton Symantec Blog

Good ‘ol days

Each week the technology press is jammed full of articles declaring the imminent arrival of the latest hard disc drive. Long gone are the days when 500 mega bytes were advertised, and the industry cranked up into gigabytes well before the end of the last millennium.

Since then the amount of data stored on personal computers has rocketed. The advent of the Internet era has made file sharing possible; people store family photos and personal documents whilst businesses collect presentations and a wealth of financial data. In parallel the capacity of hard disc drives has soared – from 50Gb to 100Gb and now most computers will come with around 250Gb as standard.

Expert procrastination

Charles Arthur writing in an English national newspaper lamented this weekend the fact that he had so much data that he couldn’t possibly back it up. He notes that ‘I swing through the store like a comet each week, on the elliptical orbit whose two foci are these: I need to do a backup; I don’t want to spend money when there will be bigger, cheaper drives along shortly… I exit the store empty handed, because you never need your backup until something goes wrong, and nothing has gone wrong yet, so I don’t need it. It’s completely illogical, I know, and it’s bound to bite me soon.’

The dilemma that Charles Arthur faces is a common one. However backing up and protecting data is now a serious business. Internet worms can destroy files and mechanical failures do occur. You can protect yourself by ensuring that your virus protection is updated and your files are secure.