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I knew that I was supposed to back up my important data on a regular basis, but I kept putting off doing the research about how to most efficiently and effectively do it. Unfortunately, about a year after I started my business, my hard drive crashed and I lost everything. I had backed up a few things on floppy disks (this was a long time ago, before Zip drives and CDs were popular means for backup), but most of it was gone forever – my emails, email address book, bookmarks of favorite web sites, recent entries in my contact database (I did have an older version backed up on a floppy disk), documents, presentations – all vanished! I cried for three days. We all know we're supposed to back-up our data on an ongoing basis ... so why don't we? You may think it's time-consuming, but I can tell you from personal experience that the time investment is nothing compared to what it takes to reconstruct everything that’s lost. Fortunately, the days of backing up your data to floppy disks are over! We have much quicker and better ways to back up data now. Here’s a Q&A to help you with the process. Why do I need to back up my files? Anything you would be sorry to lose should be backed up in the event of a computer failure. Although there are companies you can hire to recover some information, it can be expensive and a hassle. You should store your backup files in a different place from where you store your computer, in the event of fire or natural disaster. You are the only one who can answer this. The frequency depends on how much data you save to your computer each day. Consider the following types of data:
For most professionals, I recommend backing up once a week. If you add an unusually large amount of data to your computer daily, you might consider daily backup. In the event that your computer does crash, all you will have lost will be what you added since the last backup. What are the different ways I can back up my data? I keep everything that I want to have backed up in a folder on my hard drive called My Documents. With the click of an icon on my desktop called Backup, I can back up all of my data to my laptop or another drive, or I can burn it onto a CD (although it takes more than one CD to save it all). I like copying it to my laptop over my network, because I have the software loaded on there and can readily access the data if my main computer is down. Remember that if you back up data on a CD, Zip disk, or thumb drive, you cannot access the data without using a computer loaded with the software program that created the data. Here are some ways you can back up your data: § Local Backups - back up to a different drive on your own computer. For example, if your data is stored on your C drive and you have another hard drive built into your computer, you can back up to that other hard drive. § Network backups - back up to another drive on your network (like I do on my laptop). § Backup media - back up to removable media (CD, ZIP disks, flash or thumb drives). If you use this method, I recommend that you store the media off-site, in the event of a fire. § Remote Backups - back up to an online storage center. There are some benefits to using an online storage center. It can be more secure than backing up and storing your data all in the same location, and you can access your files from anywhere, because they are stored on a server that is accessible to you (and password-protected) through the Web. If you decide to back up your files to an online storage area, there are many to choose from. Here are a few: Can I automate my backup?
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