Backup! Backup! Backup!

It’s been a while since we mentioned this and in light of several people recently having data loss by not having a back up, we thought we should just bring it up again.

A backup is a copy of what is on your computer or laptop. So, for those who take pictures, documents and music OFF their computer or laptop and put it onto an external drive, to clear space on the computer, this is NOT a copy of the data, it IS the data, so what you have is NOT a backup but the originals.

So, leave the things on your PC and copy it to the external drive, whether that is a desktop drive, a portable drive or a USB stick. Once you have your copy, put a date on the diary when you will backup again and simply repeat the habit.

For a lot of people this is all too much effort. To those people we would suggest using one of the online services, such as Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive or Dropbox, which synchronises files in a folder on your computer or laptop with your account on the Internet. These are often limited by size and require you to pay for larger storage, which then brings in the other online subscription services, such as Carbonite, which can be easier to use and just as effective.

However, the point of our little update on backup is just to be sure that people are once again reminded to take action while they have the chance, before something happens and they lose pictures, music, films and documents they didn’t need to lose.