I want to talk to you about backups and their importance in
today’s digital world. There are plenty of choices of software and hardware
that will do the job as well as cloud services. Let’s dive in.
I still get asked the question “why backup”? Why would you
not backup is what I ask. There are no guarantees that your computer will last
forever and now with all the malicious bugs roaming the Internet the chances
have only increased that you will have a problem. The question is no longer “if”
you get infected; it is now a question of “when”.
External hard drives are good for backups. However, the
potential for failure is greater than, say, cloud backups because this is a
piece of hardware, after all and therefore capable of the same mishaps of
mis-managed computer equipment. You must run diagnostics and maintenance on the
backup drive to ensure that the hardware is in top shape and preserving your
data. Also, if you choose this method, I recommend that you connect the device,
run your backup and then disconnect it from the computer. If you have an
unknown virus on the computer, you do not want it to affix itself to your
backup drive infecting it.
Cloud backups are quickly becoming the popular trend in data
backup and for obvious reasons. When you do online backups through a service,
you set some parameters like time and what you want backed up and forget about
it. Your data is backed up onto servers that are maintained, kept safe from
viruses and ready when you are for recovery if necessary. You are putting your
data into someone else’s trust and many of these companies do a very good job
at cloud backup. This has become my method of backup with a twist. I manually
control my backups to the cloud then delete everything from my computer. If my
computer is compromised, hackers will be disappointed in their findings.
No comments:
Post a Comment