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.
Easy backups for your computer
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!
