Backing up Data

Back up! Back up! Back up! What would you do if one day your computer did not turn on only to take it to a technician who tells you all of your pictures, banking information, and everything you kept on your computer is gone? Even worse, how would you like that technician tell you your data can be recovered but it will cost $2,500 (the Big PC Geeks do it much cheaper). Would it have been nice to have your information backed up before hand?

1. Onsite Backup - At a minimum, you must have an onsite backup strategy. You should back up data by either adding an internal or external hard drive, periodically burning files to CD’s or DVD’s, or saving files on another computer in your network. It is important to make the point to say that if you leave your backups in the same place as your computer and there is a fire, you will lose your information. In this case, having a fireproof safe is helpful to put DVD discs or hard disks in. You have spent years creating a whole life on your computer, why throw it away when one mechanical device decides to malfunction. Even if you have an offsite backup plan, it is still a good idea to have an onsite plan because you are able to recover your data quickly where as if you only had an online plan, you would either have to download all of you data from the web or drive to the location that it is stored.

2. Offsite Backup - Having an offsite backup plan is the best plan when backing up your data. If you have an office, you may want to store your backup hard drive or DVD there. Maybe you could store your CD’s, DVD’s or hard drives at another family member’s or neighbor’s house. There are also many online backup sources for free and for a fee. Xdrive will allow you to store 5GB for free and Carbonite will allow you to store unlimited amounts of data for $50 a year. $50 a year for unlimited data storage is a really good deal. As noted above, you should not only have an offsite backup plan but also an onsite plan because you will be able to recover you data quickly. Offsite backup plans are the most important because you can have 20 copies of your data in one place but what happens if there is a fire? You will lose everything. In this day and age, data backup is cheap and you can not afford to lose your data. Remember, you should encrypt important files just incase to prevent identity theft and other issues.

3. Backup Automation - Admit it, you are not going to remember to back up.  It is not that you are lazy but because you have more important things to do than to remember to backup your information on your computer. It is important to adapt some sort of automation plan that will backup your information while you are enjoying life. Be sure to check out the projects link for a way to automatically back up your data with free software. If you can create some sort of automation process, you will save your life time and energy. After all, what good are computers if they don't make our life easier, isn't that their purpose? Carbonite is a really great solution, the transfer is slow so it is good to have onsite backup, but Carbonite works in your background and backs up all the data you selected without you having to remember to turn it on or off.