Back in the days, computer users used to download all of their favourite media off the internet. The internet was slow and laggy, but they still
did it. They didn't care (for the most part). If there was a video they liked, they would download it. If someone sent them an image on IRC, it
would be saved to their personal computer. That was the way people used to do things.
Nowadays, people don't want anything locally stored on their devices. Some of these gadgets are made with minimal storage so that "useds" can only
store their data online. A lot of people prefer online storage these days. Their reasoning being that it is expandable and more secure than offline
storage - they are still young in the mind.
Online storage has issues. Firstly, you need internet to access whatever you stored. So if the internet is down, for whatever reason, you will
not be able to access your stuff. Secondly, you are depending on the company which is storing your data. You data is only "safe" as long as the
company is safe. Thirdly, there is the risk of hacking. If you store your information on an external hard-disk, there is a zero chance of that
information being stolen unless someone physically breaks into your house and steals your hard-disk.
For the internet and digital technology to be used for storing important information is a bad idea. I'm planning on writing another article
on the volatility of the internet and why using physical methods of storage and transmission is a better alternative.
Now that you (hopefully) have seen why downloading your files is a better option, I shall go over a few methods of downloading and storing different
types of files.
It is always good to have backups. In my opinion, the best place to back things up is on a hard-disk or a compact-disk.
Youtube-dl is what I use for downloading videos. It can download from YouTube, FaceBook, Twitch and other sites.
You can download books through IRC. It may be challenging for some people to learn, but I definitely recommend it as an alternative chat platform
if using a chat platform is necessary. Here is where you get the books from:
Network: IRCHighWay (irc.irchighway.net)
Port: 6660-6669 or 7000 (6697 or 9999 for SSL)
Channel: #ebooks
For websites, since I use Firefox as my browser, I just have to right-click and choose "Save Page As...," and I will be able to save the
page with all the styling to my local storage. Because of all the JavaScript and modern JS libraries (I think that is the reason) some pages
don't render properly when they are downloaded. Just make sure to open the html file and see if the page displays correctly. In Firefox, it
is also possible to take a screenshot of the page, but I am guessing that that takes more kilobytes of data.
Images are simple. You just have to right-click on the image and choose "Save Image As...". If this option is not available, then you may
first have to choose "Open Image in New Tab" then perform the aforementioned step. Another scenario which might happen is where these options
are not available. In this case, you will have to open developer options and select the image from there. Perhaps the link to the image will
be there. You will go to the link and download the image.
For images (and maybe books and e-mails) I would suggest that you print those out. That is an even more secure way of storing them.
Yes, nothing is secure in this world, but we should try to secure ourselves to the best of our ability.