Have you ever deleted a file that you didn’t mean to and forgot to restore it from the recycle bin before you emptied it? Have you ever lost a file or had your computer go “belly up” and lose everything you have ever had on your computer? Well, hopefully I can shed some light on how you can avoid this dilemma in the future.
Most of you are probably familiar with a few of the methods to achieve a good backup or at least saving files to a CD or DVD. In recent years, Microsoft introduced “System Restore” in their release of Windows XP. But this application is clunky, uses up tons of system resources, and doesn’t work more than half the time. To safely backup your data, there are many different ways to take care of this. There are free programs out there such as FBackup and Mozy (an online data storage solution). These are good for someone that doesn’t have a lot of data to backup. Then there are hardware solutions such as tape drives, external hard drives, and backup cassettes. These solutions offer more reliable storage, but can get a little pricey. The most affordable solution, and probably the most common for home users, are external hard drives. You can pick one of these up for about $150 and up and most of them come with built in backup software. Granted that a lot of them are on a trial basis, some of them are all inclusive. If you want to back up your data on a daily basis, and need to keep it in an archival form, Seagate offers their FreeAgent GO drives. These are laptop size, enclosed SATA drives that come with a USB dock. This enables you to change out drives based on the day that you need to backup.
No matter which way you choose to go, a good, reliable backup solution such as backing up your data nightly or at least once a week to a dependable source can mean the difference between keeping your grandsons first birthday pictures, or losing them forever.
