These are some crazy times! Make the most of it by getting your photos and videos organized and backed up. Please contact me if you have questions or would like help – I’ll be home!
March Tip – Back Up Your Data Regularly
We use our computers and phones a lot. Every day. And every time we use them, we change our data – we create new files and documents, take pictures, move things around. Every time we change our data our back up copy becomes out of date. If you make a back up copy of your data once a year you can image how many changes you make before your next back up copy. Back up your data regularly. This will help you minimize the loss should your computer crash or your phone be stolen – you will only lose the changes since your last back up.
How to Back Up your Data
Here is a link to our September 2019 Newsletter where we provided all the information on creating a back up for your photos: September 2019 Newsletter
I use “Backup Strategies” as a tag on my posts. Clicking on that tag at the bottom of this post will bring up all the posts with information on backing up your photos.
Try an Automated Back Up Service
There are lots of great back up services on the market right now. I like them as they provide real-time back up and they do it automatically. Once it’s set up, I don’t have to do anything – everything on my computer is backed up, all the time.
Before I had an automatic back up in place the time I went between back ups became a calculated risk. How long had it been? Was I willing to lose everything since that last back up? Had I run a back up since Christmas or were all those family pictures at risk? It was stressful! Just how long could I go between back ups? And when did I last do it anyway?
I have used an automatic back up service for a number of years and honestly, I haven’t worried about our pictures, videos and data since we started. We have had 2 computer crashes in that time. Where we lost just about everything off the hard drive. No big deal. I have back ups in place. And if I need it, I can access the files I created yesterday.
I don’t use the back up service as my only back up – I like to have back ups that are easier to access too. But they are manual, and I have to rely on my imperfect memory and dedication – the awesome systems I have in place are only perfect if I follow them. And who wants to back up everything they did every day? Well, your automatic back up service does! Automatically! It’s a great thing!
Be aware that it can take several WEEKS to do your first back up. You can use your computer while its running, but it may slow things down a bit. The ones I have used have also let us pause the back up if we really needed to. Here are some services to check out – they are each slightly different so you will want to do some research.
- Carbonite – I use this one as we have been set up for quite a few years.
- Backblaze
- IDrive
- Acronis True Image
Check out the cost, the types of files you can back up, the support they offer and how you recover files. Search for reviews from reputable sources like PCWorld. Enjoy the peace of mind an automatic back up system will bring you.