A Plan for Keeping Your Digital Data

The Concept of a Digital Toolbox – Part 7

If my physical digital media storage is working why would I want to switch to a digital or cloud-based storage solution?

Let me try to explain why having a digital or cloud-based solution has its advantages over a physical storage solution using these three examples.

1. DVD’s everywhere.  We had DVD’s and CD’s tucked everywhere around the house.  Cases of them could be found in the strangest of places. We had them in drawers and didn’t understand nor remember how they got there.  What do you do with all this physical media? Think about it, we no longer really need them. When was the last time you popped a DVD in the player and furthermore how much longer will they be around?
   After a while, physically storing things you no longer really need becomes inefficient.  Remember your home, your life, is your business and it’s up to you to make it efficient.
   We stored all our DVD’s and CD’s on a hard drive, but later decided to move all our storage to the cloud.  Why limit ourselves to an aging hard-drive when a better cloud solution is available? You see, we decided some time ago to go all in with all things digital and this included storing our media such as movies (DVD’s) and music (CD’s) in a digital storage solution.  
2. Too many pictures to save.  You see back in the day, physical pictures and picture albums worked because you couldn’t and didn’t take an endless number of photos.  Today that’s not the case. So where are you storing this precious content? If you’re losing your photos every time you run out of space or change phones, it’s time you put a plan together for these valuable keepsakes.  You need to check out the tools that are available to keep you from losing another photo.
3. Endless computer files.  Lastly (for today), what are you doing with the computer files you’ve accumulated over the years?  Resumes? Tax documents? Letters, projects, and your personal data? Where are you keeping this information or are you losing it as you change computers or when those portable drives die and become unrecoverable?  It’s time for a plan and a solution to combat this problem.

The tools we use for digital storage
If you haven’t learned yet, a plan for life makes life better in any area you apply a plan.  I’d like to share three tools with you for planning your digital storage to make this part of your life a little better.  Let’s begin.

• Dropbox.  Most people are familiar with or have at least heard of “Dropbox” and it’s free to a point.  If you don’t have any digital storage tools, start with Dropbox and start dropping your digital content, data, and files in this digital storage tool.
• Google Drive.  You’ve heard me mention Google in previous web-posts, but today I’m speaking of Google Drive.  Google offers free digital storage with your gmail account.  We use ours for all the music we’ve accumulated over the years.  All those CD’s and now any online purchased music is stored here in Google’s cloud-based storage solution.
• OneDrive.  I’m not going to go into all the details or I will be sharing for days, but Microsoft while late to this party, has a great cloud-based solution for storing digital files.  It’s our primary place for digital storage. With a subscription to Microsoft’s Office 365, they give you a terabyte of cloud space; in English that’s a whole lot for storing videos, movies, and music.  So I get a two-for-one deal. I needed to purchase additional space and at the same time I get the latest versions of Microsoft Office on three devices of my choosing.  Our Microsoft OneDrive is our cloud solution for storing all of our digital files, past, present, and future.

Today is Friday!
You can go wrong, but that usually happens when you don’t have a plan.  If you don’t have a [digital storage] plan, you plan to fail [in keeping your digital data].  This planning thing is easy. Planning is easy when you enjoy your life, your home, your business.  When you enjoy it, you desire to do it better.

BTW – Thanks for checking out this installment of “The Concept of a Digital Toolbox”; share it with somebody.

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