Did you know that regularly backing up (i.e. duplicating your data and storing it safely), away from your computer can protect your valuable data? In this article, I cover the importance of backup, and provide guidelines on how to backup your data.
Why Do I Need to Backup My Files?
You can easily loose your precious family photos and videos, financial documents, resumes, research work, assignments, extensive contact lists, and other irreplaceable data on your computer through malware infections, loss or theft of your devices, accidentally erasing a file, hard drive failure, natural disaster such as flood, fire, or other similar occurrences.
Restoring or recreating your lost data can be expensive. It will cost you time and money at least. In some cases you may not be able to recover your files. By backing up regularly, you are assured that you can have all your data restored no matter what happens to your computer.
How Do I Backup my Files?
Follow these tips to securely backup your data:-
Organize your files and documents using folders and sub-folders instead of saving your files to random folders or leaving them scattered around your desktop for easy access.
Use external hard drives, USB drives, or online storage services and utility providers.
For extra peace of mind, consider backing up on two or more different storage options.
Keep your data backup storage away from your computer to minimize the chances of either being stolen or destroyed.
Back up all the folders, files and documents you want to protect.
It’s not necessary to back up application programs, utilities or your OS for these you would use the original disks to reinstall.
Protect your data backups by using passwords or encryption.
Restore some of your backed up data once in a while just to make sure that everything works.
