Would you be fine, or would you have forever lost, all those important photos and documents? It’s a question each of us should ask ourselves, and then take action. Sooner rather than later.
Most people don’t backup their computers for one of three reasons. Either, they don’t understand why they should, they don’t know how to, or they just have not got around to it yet. One things for sure, if you lose all your data, you will regret having not made the time.
What is Backing Up?
Backing up is nothing more than making regular copies of the ‘stuff’ on your computer, and then keeping those copies in a safe place. The key words in that statement are “copy”, “safe place” and “regular”.
Having a “copy” means that after you back up your computer, you have the same information in two, or more, separate places. If it’s only in one place, it’s not backed up. The goal being that, if something should happen to your computer, or external hard drive, so that you cannot retrieve your information from it, then you can get the information from one of the other copies. And remember, external hard drives do fail.
A “Safe Place” means keeping at least one “copy” of your data in a place that is extremely unlikely to be infected, damaged or lost. With this in mind – while Dropbox, One Drive, and Google Drive are very useful, they are not reliable backups on their own. They are great data sharing tools but do not safeguard you from the Krypto lock Virus or accidental deletion.
Making “regular” backups ensures that you have the most up-to-date copies of your data, located in time stamped folders so you can go ‘back in time’ and retrieve something you accidently deleted.
How do I Back up?
So knowing this, the next questions should be, what should I back up, how often, and what tools best suit my situation and personal backup requirements? There are many options available to you including ‘set and forget’ programs and cloud backup. You can find more information about these and other options on our Facebook page. Or if you prefer, come in and talk to us.