I certainly hope that I’ve underlined the point over the past few weeks, but in case you haven’t been following along allow me to go slowly here;
You should NEVER save anything to the hard drive of your machine…ever.
There is no reason, not ever, to be saving your documents to your hard drive. Despite all the advances in Cloud Technology, there are still people out there that insist on keeping stuff on their desktops and Hard drives. I don’t understand why this happens. There are so many things that can happen to people’s machines that it’s essential to be able to preserve the functionality and the data that people produce. In case you were wondering, there are the following issues that can be caused by keeping your data on one machine.
1) Slows your computer down – What allows your computer to run on a day to day basis is Random Access Memory (or RAM). RAM has a duel function. It not only stores all the information that you have on your hard drive (So programs and files, pictures, music and whatnot), but it is also used to run the programs. Here’s the rub when you save data to your hard drive (i.e. documents, pictures, music), then it takes away from the RAM that is needed to run your programs. This means that the programs you use will run slower. You must save your documents to a cloud system. If you look at “the Big Four” (Amazon, iCloud, OneDrive, DropBox), they are all roughly the same. They have the ability to integrate into your File Explorer (or Finder for my Mac people), so being able to view your files on your computer shouldn’t be an issue. If you keep your files on a cloud system and access them through your computer, you will still be able to access them as easily as if they were on your desktop. If you keep everything on your hard drive, your entire system will slow down, bringing your productivity to a crashing halt.
2) More memory available in cloud systems – With more and more data being stored on electronic systems, there is a greater need to be able to put all of that data somewhere. The problem is that there isn’t enough storage on your machine to be able to accommodate everything that you can or would be able to access. The beauty of using a cloud system is that you don’t need to be able to hold everything on your machine. You don’t even need to be able to access all the information you have on your specific terminal. You can change and amend what links to your cloud system you see so that you only really need relevant information if you need to. If you need everything, you can see everything, but if you don’t need it all, you don’t have to see it all.
3) Frankly, it’s dangerous – Saving to your Hard drive means that there is only one place where you would be able to access your information. If you are in one place and the terminal where the data is located is in another location, you will not be able to access it. With information on a cloud system you will be able to access it from anywhere that is connected to the internet. Saving to the cloud will save you a heck of a lot of time when looking for, or needing to add to, your data. Also if something were to happen to that terminal, the information would be lost forever. I can remember a time when I kept all my data on my computer (bear in mind this is before the cloud), and I was walking to and from school. It was winter, and I slipped on some ice and fell on the bag holding my computer. When I got home, I realized that I had crushed the laptop entirely. I had to send it back to be replaced. I was lucky because the Hard drive didn’t get too damaged, so it was salvageable. You might not be so fortunate. It is a much wiser plan to keep everything on your cloud system. That way, should something happen to the hardware that you’re working with, you only need to be concerned with replacing the shell, not the hardware AND the data located on it.
Look, here’s the thing; I am fully aware, as you should be too, that there is more and more information being created by us every single day. All that information has to go somewhere, and it can no longer go in the places where it used to go. Hard copy file folders and overtaxing the hard drive on our computers aren’t good enough anymore. Having a centralized database where you can access all of your information from any terminal is more and more essential to your digital life. I’m certainly going to be talking more about Cloud Computing in the weeks to come. What you need to remember for now is that keeping information on your actual device is no longer necessary, and really shouldn’t be done anymore. The technology has changed, so to must your practices change.
Do you use a cloud system?
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