Data Storage Defined:
Throughout your research, you’ll want to save and access your data frequently. Data storage is different from data preservation; data storage deals with storage options during the research stage whereas data preservation deals with long-term storage options after the research is done.
Storage Options:
There are several storage options that are available to you and they include the following: desktop computers and laptops, networked drives, external hard drives, optical storage, and cloud storage. Let’s look at these storage options closer:
Best Practices:
Data backup best practices includes making 3 copies of the data for backup with copies being geographically distributed --- i.e. the original (e.g. on your computer), external/local (e.g. external hard drive), and external/remote (e.g. online storage service). Having one copy of your data backup offsite protects your data from unfortunate events like theft and natural disasters.
Consistency:
It is important that you regularly backup your data to provide ultimate and consistent protection; it will protect it from catastrophic data loss. It is also important to copy data files to new media every 2-5 years after its first creation date.
Backup Strategy:
When considering a backup strategy, it is important to consider how frequent you are going to backup your files and your data backup budget.