Why and How Should You Back Data?

Backup of data can mean different things for different users! Not everyone needs to backup the same type of files. Some of the common types of files that need to be backed up for different users are Documents, Database, Music, Pictures and Personal emails.

According to Harald Anderson, a freelance writer and webmaster for an online backup service.

The cost of data loss can be huge. In fact, 20 megabytes of accounting data takes 21 days and costs $19,000 to reproduce. Among companies who lose data in a disaster, 50% never re-open and 90% are out of business within two years!If you or your company needs to ensure access to your data for many years to come, without the need for an initial hardware investment that comes along with typical backup solutions, you should look into securing the services of an online secure backup provider.

 Tips to remember when you take a backup

• Don’t try to back up the application files. Only backup the files that you created using the application. For eg, take a backup of the word, excel or powerpoint files created using MSOffice. Don’t try to back up MSOffice software files. If your system crash and then if you try to retrieve the application from the backup, it will not work. Software’s needs to be installed back to work properly.
• XP and Vista have an inbuilt backup application incorporated in the Operating System. I recommend not using that as they are not always successful. I have seen plenty of instances where some people failed to retrieve data from data files because of the Operating system corruption or because of settings changed inside the computer.
• Software’s are available for backing data like PC Backup, Genie backup Manager, Acronis True Image. Even though they are very good software’s, they can still create issues with backup if the software is corrupted.
• Manually backing up data by copy-paste is the best and most reliable way of backing up. It might be time consuming, but imagine the time that will take to retrieve the file or starting again from scratch.

 Different types of backup

• External drive

Data can be backed up on an external hard disk, Zip drive or Jump drive. This is my most favorite type of backup. External drives are affordable as the prices of the external drives have come down drastically over the years. Also the hard disk space in external drives have increased a lot to the extend that you can easily store the entire data in the computer.
Most of these devices are USB devices. Just connect it to computer and it will be detected as another drive. Copy and Paste the selected file to the external drive or right click on the file that needs to be backed up, select “Sent to”, select the external drive listed there. Once the transfer is done, disconnect the external drive so that whatever issues in the computer will not affect the external drive.

• CD’s or DVD’s

Data can be saved by burning it on a CD or DVD. The use of DVD has increased the data storing capacity. Also new technologies are being developed so that it can accommodate more data on a disk. Make sure that you store the disks separately and keep it well protected as the data may get corrupted if scratches

• Online backup

Data can be backed up online.Some of the websites that provides online backup is idrive (www.idrive.com) adrive (www.adrive.com) mozy (www.mozy.com ) Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com )
                Online backup sites are not guaranteed to work forever. However having an online backup gives you the advantage of accessing your important files anywhere in the world with a computer and internet access.

There are other ways of data backup as well,but I have not mentioned as they are costly or outdated and not suited for a normal home user or for small scale business.

Finally, think about what happens if your computer crashes right now and what if you lose all the data.Think about the consequence and if this is going to be disastrous, then start backing up data today itself.

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