Distance Learning Courses & the Importance of Backup

With the group Anonymous recently promising to take down all DNS servers on March 31, in protest of the American SOPA legislation, the question of whether distance learning courses could be jeopardized is brought to the fore.

Distance learning courses are naturally dependent on the internet. If the internet goes down for whatever reason, it’s an inconvenience for many. For others, like students of distance learning courses, it is the very real possibility that assignments are late, work is unsubmitted or the integrity of the data going either way is possibly jeopardized.

Anonymous have kindly informed the world that they intend to take down the internet temporarily on March 31. What this highlights is the possibility that the internet can be taken down and that means it’s a possibility that could occur at any time. So what are the options, what can you as a distance learning course student do to ensure your education is undisrupted during an internet failure?

The simple answer is backup and store. There are a number of excellent virtual and hardware storage options for distance learning course students who want to ensure their work and their course remain intact and uncorrupted.

Virtual or Cloud Storage of Distance Learning Course Material

Storing distance learning course material in the cloud essentially means storing it online. Data is stored within virtualized pools that are usually hosted by third parties. Data center operators, in the background, virtualize the resources according to the requirements of the customer and expose them as storage pools, which the customers can themselves use to store files or data objects. Physically, the resource may span across multiple servers. In this scenario, the organization facilitating your distance learning course may use cloud storage or, as an individual option, cloud storage is becoming increasingly available as well. In fact, quite a few companies, including many of those who provide antivirus software, offer as an additional service, virtual back up in the cloud.

The obvious question when considering cloud storage is, “if the internet goes down won’t my cloud storage be in peril?”

Good question!  It is up to the service provider to ensure the security of your data. That means they have an obligation to create storage backup systems of their own. As with all businesses, the integrity and reputation of the provider will offer you some peace of mind when determining whether they’ll keep your data safe.

Hardware Storage/Backup for Distance Learning Course Material

When it comes to removable media devices that will store your distance learning course material there is no end of options. There are approximately 70 different types of removable storage media around at present. The most common devices for data storage are probably external hard drives and USB storage devices. Any external storage device will reliably store your data but of course, the greatest disadvantage is that it will only store the data you have created and not the data stored by your distance learning course provider.

Although different types of storage ‘sticks’ are growing rapidly in storage size, external hard drives still offer the greatest storage volume. If you have large volumes of distance learning course material to store the latter is undoubtedly the better option. Stick type devices will offer up to 10 gigabytes of storage in a small and possibly easier to loose device whereas an external hard drive (they can still be quite small relatively speaking) can store 700+ gigabytes of data. That is more data storage than most laptops can offer even today.

Whichever option you choose, using the available storage options is smart. Backups are, and have always been, a very good idea.