Backups

With so much technology in our lives these days you may find a lot of your photos, invoices and other documents are stored in your PC in digital versions rather than as a printed hard copy. While this minimises clutter in your office it can cause many frustrations when important data or photos are lost after your PC crashes. To minimise the risk of this happening it is a good routine to backup all of your important data.

There are many ways to backup data. CDs, DVDs, flash drives and external hard drives are all common methods. A newer method is called ‘cloud storage’. Cloud storage is where your files are uploaded over the internet to secure servers. You never actually see or touch these servers, whereas the other more common types of backups will mean you have a physical device you can hold. The drawback of the physical device is that you have to be responsible for ensuring your backup is safe. For example, if your home was to burn down in a fire, you need to ensure your back up is stored out of your home or it too would be destroyed. This is where cloud storage is most beneficial. Your files are guaranteed to be stored away from your home and thus there is no responsibility to regularly update the files and to keep your backup in a separate location.

If you are using CDs, DVDs, thumb drives or external hard drives you will need to remember to manually back up, as well as remembering to return the backup to its safe storage location out of your office. Ideal places can include your vehicle, your handbag or a relative’s house. This ensures that if a disaster does wipe out the original files in your home, that the backup files will still be safe in their alternative storage location. It is also worthwhile to develop a back up strategy to make sure you remember to regularly back up files. This can be daily or weekly. The more often you back up the more secure you can feel that there are less files which could be lost if the original is destroyed.

There are many options for cloud storage. For large amounts of storage you will be required to pay a monthly or annual fee. Fees vary between companies and the amount of storage you require, but you can expect to pay from $5 per month depending on the features you require. This can be a worthwhile investment if you have lots of important files. Free storage is available from Google with Google Drive and another website called Dropbox. They both offer 5GB of storage for free, with the option to increase your storage for a monthly fee. Compared to the cost of buying backup devices such as external hard drives and the extra reassurance cloud storage gives, the investment in cloud storage may be worth investigating.

Google Drive and Dropbox require you to install their software on your computer. The programs are small and run in the background and will automatically update the files that are put into the “Google Drive” or “Dropbox” folders. You can install the software onto multiple computers and your files will be kept updated automatically. You can also access your files via a smartphones app so that you can access your files wherever you need.

The free storage of 5GB would be filled very quickly if you were to store photos or videos in your Google Drive or Dropbox folder. For large files such as these the best value for money is an external hard drive. External hard drives vary in price and capacity. A 1TB hard drive can hold around 200,000 good quality photos and will cost between $100-200.

Many external hard drives come with backup software you will need to install to automatically backup your entire computer. CDs, DVDs and flash drives work much the same as an external hard drive, except they often don’t have backup software so you need to remember to do it manually. Also CDs and DVDs do not hold as much data as an external hard drive. A CD will hold about 140 good quality photos, a single layer DVD will hold around 840 good quality photos and an 8GB flash drive will hold around 1600 good quality photos.

Windows 7 comes with its own ‘backup and restore’ software and can be found in the control panel. It is simple to use and allows you to backup selected folders on a schedule to CD, DVD flash drive or external hard drive. It will advise you if a backup has failed so that you can re-run it manually. This means you will always have a current back up.