We are only
four weeks into the new year and we here at Dave’s Computers have already seen
customers come to us with data loss issues. Hard drives have failed, users have
tried to recover data themselves and most of them lost it for good. I think now
is a good time to set a late New Year’s resolution to perform regular backups.
Taking a
backup of your data doesn’t have to be complex or expensive. It can be as
simple as backing your documents up to the cloud or buying an external hard
drive to back everything up to. Either way, backups aren’t just for business as
those customers who visited our store will attest. A couple lost all their
family photographs while another customer lost days of work. That isn’t a
position we want you to be in.
I tend to
recommend a two-stage backup plan. A cloud backup for important documents and
work and an external drive backup for files and folders. Windows users can use
OneDrive to backup the Documents folder and anything else you want. Apple users
can use Time Machine to do the same.
As both features
are free and built into their respective operating systems, there really is no
excuse!
Good
quality high capacity external drives can be bought for less than $100 now and
there is no excuse not to have one. Connect it to your PC via USB, copy across
all your files and folders and optionally make an OS backup as well. The
process should take less than 15 minutes and provide a full, up to date backup
of everything you stand to lose should the worst happen.
You don’t
have to buy an external drive. Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and other cloud
storage providers offer higher capacity storage for not a lot of money. A
terabyte of storage could cost less than $9.99 a month and you can automate a
process to handle everything for you if you choose.
Backing up
your data doesn’t have to be expensive or hard to do. It doesn’t have to be a
chore either. You can use a software tool to manage backups automatically or
sync your documents to the cloud without having to do a thing. As we all use
digital storage more and more to store everything we do, it makes sense to keep
it safe.
If you
suffer data loss and want professional help to recover data of any kind. Bring
your computer or hard drive to Dave’s Computers in New Jersey. We are data
recovery experts!