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Lets answer that question with another question; How many programs do you use?

In general, I recommend you have an least two hard drives. Your first hard drive should have enough space to accomodate for the programs you use – operating system, office suit, video editors, image editors. The data those programs use – text files, movies, pictures – should be maintained on the second hard drive, and therefore you should consider how many files each program is going to save.

For most home users, the first hard drive is the internal hard drive included in their desktop or laptop and it is smaller than the second, which is external and it is optional. Most home users have few text documents, several pictures and media files. All these files should be kept in an external hard drive. If you are a home user, don’t worry to much about the internal hard drive your system has. if you need space, invest your money in an external hard drive.

Small business users should have a big enough hard drive for their programs and program data, specially for database driven programs such as Quickbooks and Outlook. This will ensure data can be accessed fast by their programs. If you need more space, invest your money in an internal hard drive. As your business expands, consider more advances options like RAID or Network Attached Storage.

A backup is an important step toward preventing data loss. There are several applications and serveral accessories in the market today to help you with this task. In this post I explain the different types of backup options you will be confronted with when deciding where to save your information. This article is aimed at home users and small businesses. large scale backup systems like those required by large servers are not discussed in this post.

The first thing you have to select is the type of media you want to use for your backup. The options are hard drive, optical (i.e. cds, dvds), solid state (i.e. thumb drives), and remote backup (i.e. internet backup).

• Hard Drive – Pros: Large capacity Cons: Physical size, as big as a small dictionary
• Optical – Pros: Cheap if you have a CD/DVD/Blueray burners Cons: Physical lifetime may only be a couple of years
• Solid State – Pros: Very portable Cons: Constly when compared to the capacity and price of other media
• Remote Backup – Pros: Highest survival Cons: Very slow for people who modify large amounts of data. Security is in the hand of a third party

The second thing you have to select is the type of backup. The options are full backup, incremental, and differential.

• Full Backup – Pros: Saves all your data in one file Cons: With this process all your data is save to a file every time you want to make a backup, this makes the process very time consuming and space inefficient
• Incremental – Pros: Saves all your data created or modified since the last full backup, therefore saving space Cons: When restoring your data, the full backup and all incremental backups are required
• Differential – Pros: Saves all your data to one file, subsequent backups save data that was created or modiefied, this saves space and time needed to make a backup and restore a backup. Cons: Cannot restore data from an earlier backup than the last backup made.

Some closing advise notes:

• Learn the backup process aswell as the restore process
• An automated backup will reduce human error
• Keep the backup and the originals in separate locations as far as possible to make sure they don’t experience the same catastrophic event, such as the building burned down, flooded, etc.
• Save you backups in a standard format so that different software may be used to restore the information in case the original software used to meke the backup became obsolete

Ever bought software, then found out it doesn’t do what you wanted it to do? People get targeted every day with advertisement trying to convince them to purchase a particular product or service. But people who do not research before making the final purchase are more susceptible to disappointment and scam. In this article I will demonstrate some very basic resources from where to begin your research. This research should take no more than one relaxed weekend.

I am just going to give a typical example, but the same research applies to any product or service you are considering purchasing. This is how it begins. You get an email that basically says “Buy Mega Antivirus 2009. Rated 9/10. #1 Software Technology*…” Now say your antivirus is expiring or expired and you need to get the best antivirus of course.

The first resource is online reviews. This could quickly save you time if you find bad reviews. Just use your favorite search engine and type the name of your product and the word “reviews” at the end. Compare the reviews of five sites featuring your product. Some third-party websites that sell your product allow customers to post their reviews, read these reviews but be critical. A review that says ” I hate this software. It froze my computer” is not very useful. A review that includes the product’s strengths an weaknesses means the product was given a fair try.

The next resource is forums. Here you will find discussions organized by topics. However most of the discussions are indexed by search engines, and therefore you might find a discussion on a forum that is related to the product you are interested in by searching for you product on your favorite search engine. Your query should look similar to “Mega Antivirus 2009 forum.” Discussions provide you information like future updates (you dont want to buy a product and find out a newer version is being released next week), current issues, and competing products.

The last resource is people you know. Friends, family, co-workers, they will probably make you aware of things you might not have thought about. “I bought Ultra Antivirus 2009 because it has a game mode feature.” Then you should ask yourself, “Do I need that feature? Does my product have that feature?” Again be critical of information the people you know provide you with.

I hope I have enlighten you, and that you will become a “critical customer,” that is a customer who believes in nothing it hasn’t proven (my definition).

Computers may run slower than usual for many reasons. Here we will try to highlight some of the possible reasons starting with the most common and working our way down a list.

#1. If your computer is fairly new (maximum 2 years old) then the most likely the cause is Spyware, or a virus.

#2. Usually, people are told to install an anti-virus in conjunction with an anti-spyware. This may result in poor performance since every process and file in the computer will be scanned by each program, namely the anti-virus and the anti-spyware. It is recommended that you have both intalled on your computer. However, only run one at a time. This can be a relatively complicated task to achive for someone that is not avid with computers.

#3. System hardware does not meet recommended requirements of the operating system. You should avoid buying a computer with minimum requirements since these computers will usually only run well with the software it came with, adding extra software may slow it down.