I would imagine that almost of you who use a computer have at least once suffered from data loss.
If you have found yourself in this stressful situation, you know from personal experience how important backing up your data is, and hopefully you’ve learned to make regular data backups part of your routine. If you are fortunate enough never to have lost any data – you’re quite lucky – but read on as the following information is still valuable!
Why backup your computer?
Data loss can happen at any time without warning. Common causes include power, hard drive or component failure, malicious hacking or virus infection, physical damage (dropping your laptop or spilling fluids on the computer), and theft. The truth is that if you value what’s kept on your computer, it’s important to take steps to protect your data from sudden loss. Some work can be redone, but the loss of important emails, legal documents, or cherished files like family and travel photos is permanent.
Backup options
There are two backup choices available to you: backing up locally or backing up to the Cloud.
Local backups
The traditional backup process involves you backing up your computer or data directly to a hard drive or memory stick, etc. and keeping the backed up unit safely at home, preferably in a locked safe, or in secure fireproof / waterproof storage.
Cloud-based backup solutions
Industry experts believe that backing up to the Cloud is the way forward. Simply put, you securely transfer your files to data centres around the world and your data is backed up safely on one or more high spec hard drives .
Local versus cloud
We may feel more comfortable keeping all our personal and private data, photos and information on hard drives at home, but often we forget to backup, and in the event of a devastating fire or flood, we may not have time to retrieve our backed up drives. With cloud solutions, we can easily set regular backups and in the event of any data loss access our data from anywhere, however many of us still have concerns over security and privacy.
Personally, I think that whatever solution you prefer, the important thing is to make sure that you backup often!
This ‘Technology’ article was written for an expat magazine in Spain. The readers of this magazine are often middle to old aged and not very technology minded so we have designed the articles with these people in mind, however they can be enjoyed by everyone, and perhaps even the most up-to-date techie may find them of interest too!
