Home |

Is It Really That Important To Backup Your Data? 

For many people, computers have become a daily necessity. We use them for work, for correspondence and for entertainment. Many of the files are important documents and losing them would cost us time and money. Backups are the best way to prevent their permanent loss.
Many users have made the mistake of thinking backups are only for big companies or computer geeks, or even just thinking they'll do it when they have time. Unfortunately every single one of those users has either lost data by not having a backup, or they will one day. All computer equipment has a finite lifespan and will fail eventually.
When that failure occurs, one of two things will happen. If you have a backup, you'll restore it back onto your repaired computer or a replacement. If you don't, you'll be pulling your hair out over the lost files, music, digital photos and all the other stuff you store on your machine.
There are many ways to lose the information on your computer. Besides the obvious hardware failures, there are floods, fire, power surges or even your child unplugging the computer at the wrong moment. Your computer could also be infected by a virus or spyware that wipes everything out.
Having that data stored in a backup is often the only way to get it back. And even if it can be recovered by a data recovery service, it can cost thousands of dollars for them to do the work.
What to Backup?
In most cases you don't need to backup every single thing on your computer. It can take a lot of storage space, and take a long time to complete the backup. The critical files to backup are all the things you have created, such as word processing documents, digital photos and spreadsheets, and any software you can't reinstall from the original CD or DVD.
But backups needn't be.
The easiest way to do backups is to use the backup software that comes with the operating system. Windows has a free, usable backup program while similar ones are available for Mac, Linux and others. The software is easy to use and backing up is a simple matter of selecting which folders to backup. It even has a scheduler so backups can be automated to occur at convenient times.
If you want something a little more powerful, there are a number of backup program you can purchase. These programs offer features such as only backing up files that have changed since the last backup, or those that have changed since a particular date.
Some files are a little tougher to backup, such as email. Some email software stores the messages on the server instead of on your computer. In those cases, you can usually save the messages into a file on your computer that can then be backed up.
Backups can be saved to almost any type of drive or media - writable CD's, DVD's, USB memory sticks or removable hard drives for example. If you're really stuck you might even be able to backup your files to a floppy disk. Word processing documents and spreadsheets don't take up very much space at all.
Having to run a backup every day may seem like a pain in the neck, but you'll be glad you made the time on the day your computer crashes and you need a file that got wiped out.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

Data backups are just one part of an thorough computer security plan. Learn what else you need to know to protect your computer from other internet security problems at the Security Manor website. Visit www.securitymanor.com for more helpful information.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, which means you may freely reprint it, in its entirety, provided you include the author's resource box along with LIVE VISIBLE links (without "nofollow" tags).