Continuing the series for the #IncreaseVSChallenge for March, B is for Backup. Backups are essential for ensuring you don’t lose your precious photos or anything else you have worked on. Let’s get started.
Backup locations
Modern computers synchronise your Desktop, Documents, Music, Photos and Videos using online storage which enables them to be accessed from different devices but it is still a good idea to keep a regular backup schedule that backs these files to a local external backup device like a hard drive or memory stick.
If you get a virus or ransomware infection, the data on your computer will be infected and corrupted and that would be synced to your cloud storage provider too, leaving data you cannot recover without paying the ransom, although in most cases even after the ransom is paid, the data is irretrievably lost.
It is also a good idea to take a periodic backup of your website, if you have one. If a problem happens with the hosting, you don’t lose everything.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, periodically download your photos and videos to your computer using iCloud. You can then backup those photos as well as clear any that are taking up space on your iCloud account.
Backup software
There are different programs available for making backups, and you can do backups manually using Windows Explorer and it’s Copy To function.
Windows has two kinds of backup, FileSync, which creates a version of the files, so you can roll back to a previous version easily. Additionally, Windows 7 backup and restore copies all the files and folders into a backup location.
Look at Imperius Backup for a better backup solution, the free version allows you to backup to a USB, and supports incremental backups so only what is changed is backed up. The paid versions add the ability to create disk images which aids for disaster recovery. If a drive went bad, you could use the drive image to restore a working version of your computer. Also P2V, which creates a virtual drive out of your physical drive that can be mounted as if it’s a drive on your computer.
