The gadgets and devices that we use in the current digital
age can be protected from data theft or damage with the help of simple use of
passwords or physical protection. You
still cannot rule out the advantages of storing your personal and professional
files in the official servers, laptops or PCs. Even a small power failure or an
attack on the server can wipe out your data in a few seconds. Keeping a copy of
important data is too crucial if your whole business or career depends on it.
In this world of unexpected events, malicious stealers and
prowling hackers backing up your data becomes highly imperative. Back up
process can be a simple copy-paste of files to your pen drive or using some
extremely sophisticated and stepwise third party backup tools. You have to
select the solution depending upon the importance of your data, the kind of
threat it is exposed to, the location of data which can be single or multi
location.
It is not only the data that needs to be backed up. For
your convenience you can extend your backup plan to the operating system and
applications. You can include some selected software components, files and
folders in your backup strategy. Other kind of data like your personal
pictures, collection of music, digitized videos, documents, database, ERP or an
accounting package can also be hugely sensitive to be categorized as backable
data.
Here are some easy to follow methods of backing up your
data even if you are not a computer expert or an IT professional.
External Drive
An external drive is a removable hard disk. Storing data
on a hard drive that you can connect and detach at your own will is the
simplest and basic kind of backup technique. Identify all your vital data
stored in the hard disk and send them to your external drive which is visible
as an additional drive in your drives window. Of course you will select
with ‘ctrl’ +click mouse arrow or
‘shift’+ click mouse arrow, then open the context menu with right mouse button,
select ‘send to’ into the drive
representing the external drive.
The external drives offer you a huge memory in the range
of 250GB to a few TBs at an affordable cost. Your backup needs and the size of
your data is the guide to purchase an external drive. You can define a frequency
of weekly, monthly or quarterly for your data backup. This very easy method of
preserving the data in a flash drive or external drive can be a bit risky if
you leave them at an easy to access place. It is prone to stealing or may get
damaged if it falls down accidentally.
Network location
Organizations that own an intranet through a reliable
network of computers, offer network drive as backup location as one of the
services to its employees. This technique is easy and dependable for backing up
the data that is crucial for smooth functioning of the organization. The
employees can save their personal data as well, if the company includes this in
their service policy. The users have to create a shared folder on the network
and regularly save their files to this shared folder. As a user you can
over-write the existing copy of data or can manage folders date-wise. The
network administrator have access to all the backups.
Cloud storage
In the modern times you don’t need to take a pen drive or
an external drive carrying your data. Many companies offer the cloud storage in
different sizes on rent or free of cost. The only limitation is that if you
want to access the cloud backed up data, you must have an internet
connection. Creating up a backup is just
like copying data from one location to another in your PC or laptop. Once you
do this your data is written on the servers at their data centers. Since you
are storing the data on a third party server it is prone to theft if the
service provider has some loopholes in the security of its data center. If the
size of your files to be uploaded on cloud is big it will take more time as
well as internet bandwidth to complete the backup process.
Automatic Backup
Most of the operating systems have some backup utility. Windows
too comes with an easy to use facility to automatically back up your data and
selected files. The same utility will help you in restoring it back whenever
you need. In windows 7 or 8, the backup button is available in the start
button. But in windows 10 the same option can be availed by going to the file
history in the control panel and defining the schedule of your backups.
Backing up your Operating System
It’s a very common issue that we face as computer users.
If power fails or some virus infects our machine the OS is the first thing to
get corrupted, after which you cannot do any work. To tackle such problems you
can do following actions.
Restore Point
A simple and most reliable way to backup is to create a
restore point of your system files. In your Windows open the control panel and
click on recover to create a restore drive. In Mac OS you have to switch on the
time machine to backup your system files.
Automatic Backup
In windows7/8 the utility backup and windows10 the file
history option can be used to create system image to backup the crucial data.
This system image can be stored on a flash drive, an external drive or a
network location to restore your system anytime later
Image or Clone
Image or Clone is a dependable technique of backing up
complete hard drive and recovering the data and operating system if your system
gets corrupted. You can download or purchase third party tools to create a
bootable image of a partition or the complete drive to be stored on any
external media of your choice.
These backup techniques are quite easy to perform and
ensure that you have a safe copy of your important data in case of any
accidental delete or intentional damage. You must carefully plan your backup
routine and implement one of these mentioned methods. If you ignore this
important activity you may end up spending a lot from your budget to get the
data recovered from a professionally trained person. Backup NOW, to avoid guilt
later.
