Most of us probably store a lot of data files on the internal hard drives of our computers. Many of those data files probably can’t be reproduced, such as digital photos and videos, or long documents that can’t be rewritten very easily. The unfortunate thing about internal hard drives, though, is that they can fail at any time. Many times the hard drives will display some warning signs, such as computer crashes, or freezing, before it crashes, while other times they will just fail.
While you may be able to require your data after a problem with the hard drive is discover, such as the hard drive contains bad sectors, but many other times it may be impossible. Regardless of how bad the problems with your hard drive is, the important lesson to learn is to properly backup your data.
Backing up data involves make a copy of your data and storing the copy in another location. There are two golden rules that you should follow when backing up your data:
- Always make multiple copies of your data. This means having more than one backup copy.
- Always store at least one copy, preferably two copies, in a completely different physical location (offsite) than the master data files.
By following the above two rules, you can be sure that you will always have a readable copy of your data, should you need to restore your files. Creating a backup plan that follows the above rules doesn’t need to be complex, or difficult to implement. There are various ways in which you can backup your data while following the above rules.</p.
You can use an external hard drive to make one copy of your data. Many people tend to have an external hard drive for their data, so this could be one copy. If you buy a second, portable external hard drive and then store that hard drive in another location, this would allow you to create two backup copies of your data with one being stored offsite.
In place of external hard drives, you can look at using USB flash drives which are not expensive, and are small enough to store anywhere. The reliability, and longevity of flash drives is still unknown, but for short term backups, they will do just fine.
Burning multiple optical discs (CD/DVD) is another option. They are cheap, and may be large enough to hold all of your data. The main issue with optical discs is that if you use cheap discs, they could become unreadable after a period of time, so you ensure you use high-quality discs.
With the increase in high speed Internet connection usage, you can always look at backing up your files online. This provides a great way to store your data offsite, and you can access your data from anywhere with an Internet connection. Combine this option with one of the previous options to create multiple backup copies of your data.
There are many options you can employ to create a backup plan that will help you keep your data safe and secure. The method you choose is dependent on your backup requirements, and what makes it easy for you to backup your data.
You can find more information about backing up data at Technically Easy.