Do you regularly back up your home computer or for those of you in an office does your business regularly back up?
I ask this question because lately I have been hearing terrible stories about families losing files and photos and businesses having to shut up shop due to not having backups to restore information when a virus has taken hold. I was also speaking to a friend recently who was telling me how she now loves using her calendar on her iphone for both work and personal appointments. I then asked her if she was backing up to which she said I don’t thinks so and how do I do that. I explained it to her as now that she is happy with using this system there would be nothing worse if she lost it all and had to start again. Don’t let this be you!
Last week I had my own issue where I accidently deleted a folder from my mailbox that had important information that I couldn’t afford to lose. Personally I have never had to use my back up but I was reassured that within 5 minutes I was able to restore the folder and all was okay again.
The backing up process does not need to be difficult and if you are not sure how to do it then I ask that you seek the necessary advice from your relevant IT contact or provider. For instance I use Apple products now for both my business and at home with my family and I back up the business/home computer daily and the information is saved to a portable hard drive as well as to the cloud. I think it is also very useful to test your back up from time to time to ensure it actually works. There is no point backing up if you are not 100% confident it is actually doing what it is meant to be. It is also very useful to know what the process or procedure is that you need to follow should you be in a situation like I was when you need to restore something.
The other thing to be aware is it is okay to back up to a portable hard drive but what happens if your computer gets stolen as does your hard drive that probably lives next to the computer on your desk? My suggestion here is to have two hard drives regularly rotating one off site (ie to a family members place or ones work place) so the worst case scenario is you lose a week or so of work, files or photos and not months & months!
In a family environment it is also important that not only are all your devices and computers backed up but so of your children, particularly those who are students. There would be nothing worse that losing a major assignment that your child has spent hours on and all of a sudden the computer or ipad just died. Please have this discussion with all family members and also it is useful to check their devices as I my son recently told me he was backing up as he thought he was when infact it actually wasn’t.
Please don’t leave it too late as when your device or computer dies then it is unlikely you will be able to recover anything and if you do you will be in the minority and lucky! Please look into backing up now.