Computer Tip – Backing Up Data

Backing up data is simple to do, but unfortunately the task is commonly overlooked. I cannot stress enough, the importance of doing at least one data backup per week or even more often.

I am sure  you are asking why should I back up my data. The simple answer is because it’s easy and can save you hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Consider for a moment the information that is stored on your computer system. If you are an average home computer user then this information will likely consist of email, photos, personal documents and perhaps other files such as embroidery files, music downloads, etc.  The question you want to ask yourself now is, “Do I want to lose the data on my computer?” or, more importantly, “If I do lose this data, can it be replaced?”   The short answer is yes, maybe some of it can be replaced, but you can never replace all of it.

Although, it is much more likely that you will lose data as a result of mistakenly deleting it, hard drive failures do occur and unfortunately can occur at the most inopportune times. In either case the cost to recover the data can be very expensive or the data may be irretrievable.

You can protect your data and perform manual or automatic backups easily yourself using an external USB hard drive or its smaller cousin a USB stick (thumb drive) but with the best of intentions, you don’t back up on a regular basis. Either life interferes or you think you will do it “later” and later never happens.

You can purchase auto back-up programs that take the worry out of backing up for you, but free is always good, right? A very effective free backup tool is called Cobian backup. This is a very easy to use application but I would recommend you read the information on their web site prior to downloading the application. Once downloaded, you will still want to read the instructions as you setup your backup configuration. Once you have the software setup and configured be sure to use run it every day. It will only take a few minutes to perform the task and the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks and those middle of the night thoughts, “Oh, did I remember to back up my computer?”