We take
great care to back up the firm’s data. You should take
great care to back up your personal data. Consider all
the digital pictures, videos, personal correspondence, e-mail, and other data
on your home computer. Now think for a moment about how you would feel if
all that data suddenly disappeared. Not a happy thought, is it? You
should know that it can happen – and it can do so without
warning – from a hard drive crash, lightning strike, or any number
of other uncontrollable events. You can take some simple and
not-too-expensive steps to help save your precious data. The short answer
is to make sure your data exists on multiple devices and/or in multiple places.
One of
the simplest ways to make sure your data is protected from a hard drive crash
is to back up your data to an external hard drive. There are many options
sitting on the shelf at Best Buy, Office Depot, or even Wal-Mart. You can
expect to spend about $100 for a device that has plenty of capacity to back up the
data on your computer. These external hard drives connect to your
computer via USB cable and typically use included software to keep your data
backed up. Some rely on the backup software that is built in to Microsoft
Windows.
For a
more convenient setup with added protection consider an online backup
provider. A good example is Carbonite, but there are many, many
choices. At the time of this writing Carbonite costs $59 per year for its most basic service.
To use an online backup provider you typically begin by signing up on the company's Web site,
download some software to your computer, and then let that software walk you through the setup
process. Once the software is configured your data is copied to “the cloud” on a regular
basis – you don’t have to do anything else. Plus, you get the added
protection of the data being stored offsite, which provides protection against
theft, fire, lightning, and other “local” problems that could render a backup
made to a nearby USB hard drive useless.
There are
other approaches and solutions that could work, as well. The point is to
get you thinking about backing up your data. If you are not backing up
your data at all right now, you should start doing so right away!
Craig Rhinehart, Director of IT Services
