Easy Ways to back up your Computer
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Tonight on WRAL news there will be a story on how to back up your computer. That is great if you are in the Raleigh area but if you're not, or if you would just rather hear it from a technician, here's our blog post on backing up.
We're asked this often- how should it be backed up? For most people the solution is simple.
Why back it up? Your hard drive is going to crash. We tell this to people all of the time. It is not IF but WHEN. Your hard drive is a cheap piece of equipment spinning at 4,200-10,000RPM. When it crashes, your data can be completely lost. We see it multiple times each day. Sometimes, using one of our data recovery services we can retrieve some of it, but sometimes the data is completely lost.
Again, there are several ways to back up your data. Keep in mind that in the event of a major system crash your programs will need to be reinstalled, unless you have an advanced backup utility. The main gist of this article though is how to keep backed up the irreplaceable files- baby pictures, last year's tax return, grandma's apple pie recipe, etc.
Options:
1. Burn the data to a CD or DVD. Almost all modern computers have this option and blank CDs cost as little 10 cents. Simply select and burn your documents, pictures, email database, etc to a CD or DVD. Most DVDRW drives also burn dual layer DVDs which hold over 8GB data.
2. Flash drive! A 2GB flash drive goes for $7 or so. Keep in mind these go bad also, so sometimes you need a backup for your backup. At this price buy a few of them. They also come in much larger sizes. These are also known as thumb drives, flash memory, USB sticks, jump drives, etc.
3. External hard drive. This is a great option if you have large amounts of data to save. A 1TB drive will hold a whole terrabyte of data and is currently around $100. These are susceptible to eventually crashing as well.
4. Network hard drive. Almost the same as above, but this is a hard drive that lives on your network. More advanced users or companies use NAS units (network attached storage).
5. Online. If you need off-site storage of your data, or if you just like paying monthly fees, you can get some online storage. One of the latest offerings for online storage is Microsoft's "SkyDrive" (visit the site here). The site currently offers 25GB free storage.
6. Clone. Some people must have an immediate, ready to go solution. We have a customer who carries around 2 identical laptops. If one fails he can immediately start using the second machine. He clones his hard drive the another weekly using a software such as Acronis.
There are more ways to back up data but the above are the most common.
posted by AbsoluteRaleigh @ 9:04 AM,
