I can't stress just how important this is: YOU NEED TO BACK UP YOUR DATA!
I don't normally insist that my clients do anything. I won't insist that you to use a smartphone, or to switch to a Mac, or to buy a new computer/TV/printer (I'll often recommend, not insist). But there's one thing that every computer user absolutely must do, and that's back up data that can't be easily replaced.
In the tech industry we say "there are two types of people: those who have lost data and those who will." It's a sad fact that hard drives die, thieves steal, nature happens. When that happens, is there any information on your computer that can't be replaced? Photos of loved ones? That 50-page document you were working on? Important client files? Records you scanned and threw away? If there's anything on your computer that you can't replace in a couple hours (or ever), you need to back up.
Here's the good news: backing up is easy, and it can be very inexpensive or even free!
First, there are several ways you can back up:
- To another folder on your computer - this saves you in case you make a bad change to a file, but if that hard drive fails you still lose everything.
- To another hard drive in your computer - this is the minimum I recommend, because you're protected if either drive fails, but you're not protected if that computer is stolen or lost.
- To an external hard drive elsewhere in your home or business - even better, but you're still vulnerable if someone gains access to your workspace, or if a fire or flood claims the area.
- To off-site storage (including - but is not limited to - the cloud) - in my opinion, this is the best solution because you are safe from all possible local issues.
At this point I'd like to offer a few horror stories:
Several years ago, Francis Ford Coppola lost 15 years of work and family photos to burglary. Some of it was backed up, but not everything.
A client of mine walked into his office one morning to discover that a pipe had burst above his office space. The water completely drenched a laptop containing a great deal of client data. Fortunately, he had just had me out a couple weeks earlier to set up a cloud backup solution for him, and no data was lost. Sadly, I've had other clients come to me too late.
- I had a hard drive fail that contained all my photos from the past 10 years, including all my wedding photos and videos. I didn't worry, though, because it was all backed up. I bought a new drive and was back up and running in a day.
The backup service I recommend comes from a company called Crashplan, which is a cloud backup service. Their business is in selling their off-site server storage space to back up your files. There are some who find this a little scary, and are concerned about their files being stored on someone else's system. What I stress is that Crashplan encrypts your data before it ever leaves your computer. This prevents anyone from seeing your data even if they gain access to Crashplan's very secure facilities. I've been trusting my family's data to their connection for years now, and have every confidence that it is secure.
However, you can still store your data off site and not trust it to Crashplan. Their software allows you to back up your data to another computer running their software. If you have a work computer and a home computer, you can have each computer back up to the other one. If you don't have enough room you can purchase external hard drives to provide the storage. Crashplan lets you back up to another computer or to an external hard drive for free. They only charge for their cloud storage service.
Another reason I recommend services/software like Crashplan is because they back up your data automatically. That means that you never have to bother with the chore of plugging in that thumb drive or external hard drive and running backup software yourself. I've had many clients who kept a hard drive on a shelf for backing up, but didn't do it regularly. A year old backup isn't very useful if you lose everything newer than 12 months ago.
I leave you with one last piece of information: if you don't have a backup and your hard drive dies, most of the time you'll need to hand it off to a hard drive recovery company. They will take the drive apart in a clean room and do their best to retrieve your data, but recovery isn't guaranteed and is often impossible. Either way, they'll charge you an average of about $1,000 for the effort.
That's why I urge you to back up!
If you would like help setting up a backup plan, contact 3TG.