When you think about data storage, what do you think about? For the vast majority of consumers and businesses, data storage solutions come in the form of encrypted external hard drives, encrypted 16GB– 128GB USB devices and for tech users still stuck in the year 2000, zip drives. Remember zip drives?
Ruling out zip drives, encrypted USB sticks and encrypted external hard drives are great data storage devices however, like anything physical, both data storage solutions have major issues.
One, due to their size, USB sticks tend to get lost pretty easily. Although external hard drives are a bit larger, most external hard drives can fit easily into a jean pocket and thus, as just as portable and easy to lose as a USB stick is.
Two, encryption depends on humans. By that we mean encrypting a storage device relies on the user to do so. Do most consumers of business employees know how to fully encrypt their storage device? No. If they did, most offices wouldn’t have/need IT departments.
Third, like the encryption of a device, local data storage depends on the human element of remembering to backup new data. How often do you remember to backup the data on your hard drive? Do you do it all the time? Do you do it some of the time? If you are like most people, unless you remember to set up auto backups for an external hard drive, you’re not backing up data on a consistent basis.
Lastly, storage capacity is always limited with physical devices. Even if you utilize a 128GB USB devices or a 5TB external hard drive, after a given amount of time, the storage capacity of your device will run out causing you to either buy a new device or do nothing at all.
With all this said, enter private Cloud storage solutions.
Private Cloud Storage Rectifies the Aforementioned
The reasons consumers and corporations should and need to make use of private cloud storage software are all those which local storage solutions fail to offer.
Personal Cloud Storage Doesn’t Get Lost
Remember that time you misplaced your 64GB USB stick and somehow threw away your 1TB encrypted external hard drive causing all your precious data to go away? With private Cloud storage software and services, this never happens. Being that data is stored in Cloud servers halfway around the world in a Tier 3 – 4 data center, your data is never getting lost.
Personal Cloud Storage Data Encryption
One of the major benefits if solutions like Private Dropbox Cloud storage is found in data encryption. By utilizing private Cloud computing storage providers like Dropbox, Sugar Sync, Box.net, your data is encrypted when it is uploaded. Data encryption is then maintained through storage and downloading. Moreover, the teams behind major Cloud storage providers make it their job to continually check for any holes in their encryption methods and firewalls.
Automatic Data Backups
Utilizing private Cloud storage services over home Cloud storage devices means automatic data backups taken on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Most Cloud storage providers offer backup services, which take a full backup of your data and then, when you add more data, incrementally backup new data to your full GB capacity. Beyond this, most backups are kept for a period of 3 days to one week wherein the newest backup deletes the oldest.
Can you do that? No.
Storage Capacity
Your USB and external hard drive have a hard limit to the amount of local data they can store. That limit can be anywhere from 512MB to 5TB. Once that limit is reached, your device is now mute. Simply put, once the limit is reached, you need to purchase a new device and decide what to do with your old device and the data it holds. With private Cloud storage solutions, your storage allotment is scalable. You need more storage capacity? You pay for more capacity. You need less private Cloud storage capacity? You pay for less capacity. It’s that simple.
Can your USB stick or external hard drive do all that? No, no they can’t.