Whether you are using your computer for business or personal use, you need a plan for protecting your data.
If you don’t have a backup plan, you run the risk of losing some or all of your data if your computer fails.
The key elements of a good backup plan are “contingency planning” and “disaster recovery”.
Contingency Planning is ensuring you run regular data backups. The more irreplaceable your data (i.e. business financial records, family photos), the more frequently you should back it up. We recommend you backup your data at least once a week.
Disaster Recovery is ensuring that if you lose your computer equipment or entire home or office to theft, fire, flooding, etc. you have a data backup stored off-site. The off-site backup ensures you still have access to a copy of your data.
Backup Solutions:
- Portable Hard Drive – Cost effective solution for backing up an individual desktop or laptop. See our store for models we recommend.
- Pros: Inexpensive, widely available, easy to set up.
- Cons: Single point of failure (if the drive fails data recovery can be expensive or if the drive is lost so is your data), no “off site” copy of your data.
- Online Backup Service – Variety of providers to choose from for both business and residential users.
- Pros: Data is stored off-site, retrievable anywhere you have Internet access.
- Cons: Running the first backup can take a long time. Pricing varies depending on number of computers and amount of data to be backed up.
- USB Flash Drive – Good for temporary storage of limited amounts of data. See our store for models we recommend.
- Pros: Inexpensive, widely available, easy to use.
- Cons: Only suitable for limited amounts of data (<128GB). Can fail without warning. Easy to lose due to size.
- DVD – Good for storage of limited amounts of data.
- Pros: Inexpensive, easy to use.
- Cons: Time consuming to backup large amounts of data.
By having a backup plan and performing regular backups, you will ensure your data is protected and avoid the high costs of data recovery.