Backups – It could save your life!

Recently a friend of ours experienced what most of us would not like to experience: A failed hard drive!  Despite all efforts of using a Data Recovery software tool, the data on the drive could not be recovered.

Even some of own team members at TECHNOKAT Solutions suffered at the hands of a failed drive.  Now what does this tell us?  We need to regularly backup our most precious data!

Some of the things you should back up are:

• User Document folders (In Windows machines, this can be found in C:\Users\[yourfoldersname]).  This would include the Pictures, Videos, My Documents, Desktop folders.)
• Outlook Backup (The PST files stored at the location found in Outlook Account Settings >> Data Files >> Personal Folders )

There are various mediums you can use to back up your data; each however, would have its advantages and disadvantages:

• Burn data onto CDs or DVDs (cheap, but with medium level storage capacity and susceptibility to exterior damage)
• Copy onto external Hard drive (Slightly expensive and susceptible to exterior damage, but with large storage capacity)
• Copy to USB Flash Drives (cheap with limited storage capacity)
• Upload to Online Backup sites (such as xDrive and iBackup may be costly, but enable large storage capacity)
• Tape (Drives are expensive, but has large storage capacity)

You should back up as frequently as you think you need to have your data relevant.  This means you can backup daily, weekly, monthly or yearly.

Use any backup software of your choice and ensure that you label each backup appropriately with a name and date.

Hopefully, if you are ever in need of your backup copy, restoring from your backup should be easy and you should be back up and running again!