Data Backups – A Modern Day Necessity
It’s generally known that we should all back up the information on our computers and laptops in the event of a disaster. The most common disaster is a failed hard drive that needs to be replaced. Once done we reinstall all the files and programs so the computer looks just as did before the failure but we need those files – we need the backup.
The other big threat is Ransomware and you may have heard of Wanna Cry that’s been in the news recently. There is no escaping it and if your computer gets infected and you don’t have a backup then you must pay or be prepared to lose everything.
Backups used to be external hard drives that you’d plug into your computer and make a copy that you kept in a safe place. The problem with this is:
- It must be done manually and to be honest, few of us manually backup as often as we should
- Any new stuff that goes on your computer between backups is unprotected, so, the longer between backups, the more at risk you are
These days we have automated cloud backups that happen overnight, every night. You don’t need to a thing except paying the subscription fee. We encourage all our customers to take this type of service because it eliminates the risk of losing valuable files, photos, and documents. The better cloud backups will even keep deleted files for some months so if you accidentally throw away a file, you can retrieve it. The manual backup method doesn’t do this.