Where Is Your Data Stored?

Nowadays, it can be quite unfathomable to think of modern technology without somehow associating it to cloud computing. Some of the world’s biggest companies have established a cloud-based business model with a massive capacity to store data, advantaging them to optimize their processes. Data stored in the cloud backed across various sites means they are possibly stored across different countries, not necessarily in the cloud providers’ headquarters. The heightened popularity of cloud-based data storage has pushed people to demand answers as where is your data stored, and how secure it is to store and share information through multiple virtual networks.

How is Data Usually Stored?

While cloud computing boomed after the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was relatively accounted for before the pandemic hit the world. In a network of computers implemented by businesses that store and share users’ data, cloud storage consists of the central control server connecting the users’ computer with a storage network responsible for storing data.

Any computer data is usually stored as a digit, where letters become numbers, and photographs are turned into a group of numbers representing a location, colors, and the brightness and contrast of every pixel in the photo. In the case of binary data, it is mainly stored on a computer’s hard drive disk (HDD). The device is created from a spinning disk with a magnetic coat and heads that allow it to analyze and write information as magnetic patterns.

In the case of data stored in cloud computing, in its raw form, any cloud computing system has a single data server connected to the internet. Data centers are responsible for holding a voluminous mass of servers running numerous complicated operations for businesses to generate these data.

For instance, when a user saves any data on their device, it is cloned and sent to a non-premise service. With the help of cloud computing, the physical aspect of the servers disappears, allowing the data to be stored on any servers located in the data center.

Where is Data Physically Stored?

The actuality of cloud data physical storage lies within the idea that any data obtained from users must have a location to inhabit. This inhabitant must be a physically touchable device. Given that data centers are the main storage cloud space, they deliver server space for cloud computing to copy and gather data before being distributed to businesses to be generated for profit.

The physical location of data storage heavily relies on ensuring the maintenance and security of the physical storage space for cloud data. And since data centers are spread worldwide, a remarkable number of cloud computing providers do not focus on the maintenance of their physical stores. The globally adopted approach by storage providers consists of developing the centers and leasing the data storage to companies. 

This means that while the owner of the data could be residing in the U.S., this, however, does not necessarily mean that it is stored in the same country. Data centers are spread worldwide, with providers in one location and leasing their spaces for companies in another different country or continent.

So, to answer the question, it could be quite difficult to know exactly where each user’s data is being stored, as they’re not agreed on or approved upon criteria for where each country’s data has to be located.

In some instances, various factors can affect the physicality of data’s location. Any data obtained from any application or website and saved into the cloud is physically protected and located on a server in some server farm and data center somewhere around the world. Each person’s data space is private for the owner of the data and cannot be accessed by anyone. The only way to honestly know the space of your data is to ask the cloud provider.

Summary

The current state of cloud data storage heavily relies on servers and data storage. The future of data storage depends on changing the existing location of such data, moving it closer to the user as customers focus on increasing their options regarding where the data is being stored. Following the pandemic, specific patterns began to emerge as to where the ideal location to store data as the world’s adoption of cloud storage is intensively accelerating as manufacturers and storage provers strive to accommodate the industry’s ever-changing needs.

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