Plan your storage

Disk space is relatively cheap, but you need to organize and back it up to make it effective. I have over 1 GB of documents, saved web pages, and journals. My "New Computer Install" folder requires 6GB and that doesn't include the OS. Our website takes up 1.5GB, our music 15 GB, and in four years we have collected over 15,000 photographs which takes up 35GB. The real disk hog is video at a whooping 10GB per hour, yes you read right. We now have close to 1000GB of storage dedicated to our photos, video, and their backups. Disk space is cheap - especially if you consider the pain you’ll feel if  you lose everything.

Partition Your Disk

We typically partition our main disks into two partitions; one for the operating system and program installs (executables and supporting files) and one for the data and documents. This makes it easier to plan the backup phase. Make sure you understand which files each program updates when you use it. Where are your emails stored? Where does your photo management software store its additional data, such as category tags etc? Where does your iPod store its music library index? 

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