Issue 3.13
Almost everyone considers backing up their information on the computer important and, as regular readers know, I end almost every article with the encouragement to back up anything important. So why don’t we do it? I even find myself forgetting to do regular backups on a couple of my less-used computers. We just get busy and we are often forgetful so we need to create a strategy that will protect us (and our data) from ourselves.
Interestingly, it is not the loss of business and financial records that usually causes the most sadness and anxiety with most of my customers. It is the loss of pictures, family histories and personal documents. Music or videos are often important and take the most storage space. Usually business records can be reconstructed from bank records, sales receipts, etc. When experiences that you cherish have been recorded in picture and the written word, those are the things you can’t replace. My brother in law had a house fire a few years back that destroyed everything including their computer. They barely had time to get out safely. The thing that they were most sad about was the pictures from when their children were younger, some in albums and some on the computer.
There are two types of backups you should seriously consider – on-site and off-site. If my wife’s brother had copies of those things in another location the memories would not have been lost. For on-site purposes, you can use an external hard drive or even a couple of flash drives if you don’t have a large number of pictures or files. An 8 Gigabyte flash drive for example, can hold tens of thousands of standard resolution photos and even can hold a few hundred or a few thousand high resolution pictures, depending on your camera. You can also store quite a bit of information on writeable CDs and DVDs. CDs hold about one tenth the amount of the 8 Gig flash drive and DVDs hold about half as much. If you have a lot of data and pictures you want to keep backed up, you will probably be happier with an external hard drive – especially for music and videos. 500 Gigabyte versions are available under $100 and you can get from 1 to 4 Terrabyte versions (each Terrabyte is equivalent to 1000 Gigabytes) for a bit more.
One of my customers who has a large amount of critical data backs up to a large external drive and then puts the drive in a safe deposit box. That is one approach to the off-site backup. The other is an online or cloud service that backs up your data as you create it. The advantage is, once you set it up, you don’t have to remember to start the backups or check to see if they are working.
There are three companies that I recommend that specialize in online backups of your data. Each has their pros and cons, but I have tried them and they work. The cheapest is CrashPlan which has a number of options costing differing amounts from $3 to $10 per month. Their budget service is quite slow, but if you don’t need very much backed up, it is a good basic service. Another I liked a lot was Mozy, which used to offer unlimited backup for $5 per month but has now gone to basing what you pay on how much you store. For me it is way too expensive. My prime recommendation for most customers is Carbonite which is fast and unlimited for about $5 per month.
Everything you do to keep your data safe will give you an added measure of peace and confidence, so determine what you need, and remember to always make sure you have a back up of anything important.
Shaun McCausland has worked in the computer industry for over 30 years, 20 years of it locally with Bits ‘N’ Bytes and Musicomp and currently does in-home and on-site computer consultation, service, training and repair. If you have questions you can reach him at 435-668-7118 or through his website at www.bitsnbytescomputers.com.