How To Backup Your Computer Properly

 

 

You probably spent hundreds or possibly thousands of dollars on your computer. If something were to happen to the computer itself, it is one thing you would undoubtedly be concerned about. The cost of the data stored on the computer, however, is far larger than a few hundred dollars.

 

The data can be precious depending on the type of job you do on your computer, whether you have a home office or just a personal computer. You may lose everything with just one hard disk failure, including digital photos of treasured family occasions and years’ worth of financial records. Although replacing the hard drive will be reasonably inexpensive, how will you recover the lost data?

 

In actuality, you ought to begin backing up your computer’s data right now. After all, a power surge or outage could occur at any time, so being ready in advance is a good idea. Having a strong, reliable backup makes sense when you consider that 22 billion dollars would be lost due to data failure every year. Up to 70% of businesses that experience significant data loss fail within the following year.

 

When else should you back up your data, besides right away? “As often as required” is the response. If you often add or edit data, you should definitely create a small backup of that data at the end of each day, followed by a larger backup at the end of each week.

 

Your backup schedule need not be as demanding if you use a modest personal computer and don’t accomplish a lot every day. In that situation, you might only need to perform a full backup of your computer once a month, but you should always be sure to have a backup of any new data you add to your computer.

 

What types of backup materials are best for you?  This depends on how large your system is, and what you intend on backing up.  CD-Rs can be good for short-term, or for backing up smaller files.  These are very inexpensive discs, and you can fit 700MB of data on each one. However, if you are going to be backing up larger files, then you should look into another method.  DVD+R and DVD-R discs are good for backing up files up to 4.7 GB. You can also use DVDs for backups that are up to about 8GB if they are dual-layer and you have a dual-layer DVD writer.

 

Another popular option includes external hard drives.  The benefit of these is that they are relatively quick to write to, and can be up to 500GB in size and are highly portable and efficient as a means of data storage.

 

Finally, you can also back up your data online if you have a high speed internet connection and can afford to purchase an online data backup service.

 

Depending on the type of backup you’re going to make, you may need backup software. This software is designed to back up everything that you need backed up and is the ideal way to make a full system backup.  Just make sure that you are close enough to switch out discs if you are saving your data to CDs or DVDs!

 

Do not wait until it is too late!  It is very easy to save your data.  Making CD or DVD backups of your most important data can be done for a few dollars and in a few minutes.  This is definitely a good time investment!

 

 

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