Your data will die three ways: corruption, hardware failure, or disaster. The 3-2-1 rule isn't arbitrary—it's systematic defense against all three. But the rule that matters most: untested backups aren't backups.
Why we ended up with three ways to store data, and how to pick the right lie for your application.
Cloud storage forces you to make explicit tradeoffs that physical storage hides—choosing between cost, speed, and durability based on how you think you'll access data in the future.
NAS solves the scattered-data problem: one device on your network becomes the single source of truth for files, accessible from every computer as if the storage were local.
Every RAID level is a bet—trading capacity, performance, or complexity against the drive failures you fear most. Here's how to choose which tradeoff fits your data.
SANs separate storage from servers, creating independent pools of block storage that outlive the machines accessing them—the foundation of enterprise data infrastructure.
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