Sringtime is a chance to clean your house and its contents thoroughly, but it’s easy to forget about cleaning your data. Picture each device you and your family own as a messy drawer, cabinet, wardrobe, closet, or room… that’s locked. Now, if you’re already trembling with anticipation, fear not. We’ll help you get your life back on track with these tips about devices, storage, and you.
The first step to cleaning up all your data is collecting all your devices with said data. So yes, that includes everything from your car’s dash cam to your smartphone. If it has data in it that you need or would like to store for backup, it counts. Like most average consumers, you’re probably now looking at a pile of gadgets consisting of countless flash drives and memory cards of different formats, cameras, phones, tablets, laptops, and even desktop computers. While it’s a large pot to sort through, we’ll simplify matters by first filtering these devices into three categories: Apple, Android, and neither. The best part about the smart phone ecosystem and “smart” devices nowadays is that almost everything and anything is connected, thereby saving you a ton of time and grievances.
iCloud: pretty handy
If you are an Apple fan and have an iPhone, MacBook, or iMac, you’re in luck because chances are that you already have and use iCloud. For those who don’t know about it, iCloud, when you’re signed in, collects and stores all your photos, music, video, calendar, documents, etc., securely on the cloud, allowing you to access your files wherever you have an Internet connection. It’s pretty handy and does a great job of collecting all your loose files here and there. Just make sure you’re signed in to your main account and then sync your files and folders as necessary.
On the other end of the spectrum, you Android users will also have an easy time collecting your data as long as you’re signed in to your main account. For photos, there’s the Google Photos app that compiles all your photos and automatically creates albums for you. The great thing about Android devices is that there’s a Google app for almost every type of data you have: documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, drawings, and if not, there’s Google Drive, which is a file storage and synchronization service. In it, you’ll be able to access your previously stored documents, as well as upload new files even if they’re not a picture, word, or PDF files.
Both methods involve storing your data on the cloud, but you should know that these are not the only two options. There are plenty of other cloud-based storage services such as Box, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, and more. Each service offers the same core function, which is to act as a treasure chest for all your data; however, pricing and storage capacity will vary. While cloud storage may not appeal to some, there are a few functions that you just won’t have with a flash drive or external hard drive, and that’s online editing and file versioning. Online editing probably needs no further explanation, but with it you’ll be able to edit your files online and have it sync across devices. File versioning automatically saves a previous copy of a file so that after you edit it, an original copy will be retained. It’s not a new concept, since you can do this manually, but having it done automatically sure makes our lives easier.
Wireless devices
Now that we’ve got our “smarter” devices squared away, let’s split the rest of the remaining devices into two groups: wired and wireless. First, let’s cover wireless devices since these will be the quickest and easiest ones to deal with. But wait—what if you’re an Apple or Android user who doesn’t trust your information and documents on a third-party server? What do you do with your data then? Don’t worry; we’ll cover your options farther down in the “wired” section. For now, let’s continue and tackle our wireless devices.
“Wireless devices” is a broad category, but is also easy to deal with, since many of the manufacturers aim for simplicity. Let’s say you have a Wi-Fi-enabled camera connected to your home network. At the minimum, you’ll be able to offload pictures directly onto your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet. Some may even upload your photos to an online web service. Otherwise, it could show up as an accessible folder in your list of network attached devices, allowing you to drag and drop photos as you please. There’s no clear-cut method to how you collect your data here, and it will mainly depend on said device. It may require some research or tinkering, but it’s definitely not rocket science.
Wired devices
So your data is not stored on the cloud or your device does not have wireless capabilities. The key to your problems is good old wired connectivity and memory cards. Take the smartphone back as an example. Once it’s connected via USB to a computer, you’ll be able to select from multiple options of how it’s recognized. The correct choice here would be to “transfer files,” and this goes for non-smartphone devices, as well. After doing that, your device will show up as a single folder containing all the data in the device, such as photos, documents, music, even core system files, and more. Be sure to only move files with which you’re familiar, otherwise you could end up breaking an app or whatnot. A tip is that photos are generally stored in the “Camera” folder located in the “DCIM” folder. Everything else, such as music and downloaded files are much easier to find. Simply offload your data onto your computer and then to wherever you back it up, and you’re set.
On the rare occasion that you don’t have a USB cable lying around and happen to have a device with a memory card, you’re still in good shape as long as your computer accepts it. Depending on what format your memory card is, you may or may not need an adapter for it. Many laptops have an SD memory card reader and can handle SD, SDHC, and SDXC cards; however, some devices use microSD cards and that’s when something like the SanDisk Micro SD to SD Adapter comes in handy. With the power of adapters, you’ll have access to your devices in no time and you will be able to transfer your data onto your computer for safekeeping. Everything else, such as flash drives and external hard drives, are self-explanatory. Simply plug them in as usual and you’ll be able to collect your files from there.
After collecting all your data from the devices scattered throughout the far corners of your residence, you’ll need a safe place to store it. Many users will have it stored on their main computer; however, this is not safe at all and definitely not recommended. Storage experts suggest you keep three backups of your data. The first will be on your main system, the second should be an external storage device, and the third can be a cloud service or another external storage device located off-site. This guarantees that in case anything does happen to your home, you’ll still have a backup elsewhere.
Storage options
So in what exactly do you store your data? We’ll cover options from a beginner level to an advanced user. For starters, a simple USB flash drive will do the trick. Flash drives such as the SanDisk 256GB Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive provide plenty of storage and are very affordable. You can even use memory cards if you wish. Chances are, though, that once you start including photos and videos, you’ll run out of room pretty quickly. Therefore, they’re probably better off for word documents, spreadsheets, and files that don’t take up as much space. Luckily, that’s where external storage drives come in. External storage drives come in a variety of flavors:hard drive or solid state, wireless or wired, portable or not. Whatever your choice is, with the large storage capacity in these storage solutions, you’ll have an easy time filing all your data. Finally, for the advanced user or those who wish for the utmost protection for their data: hard drive arrays, Network Attached Storage (NAS), and additional internal drives for RAID. We won’t be getting into these, but now that you’ve collected, sorted, and backed up all your data, you can let out a sigh of relief as your spring data cleaning is finished—for now.
