bloodwood
Full Member, Forum Supporter
I am a computer technician at a local college and quite often I get people coming to me with problems which mean they have lost their files. Their assignments, recipes, songs, photos, wills. Sometimes months or years of work and valuable stuff they have collected. It could be on their hard drive or on their USB drive. Gone. Irrecoverable.
Sometimes it is a failure of a physical component and sometimes it is the result of virus, malware or accidental deletion. Sometimes there may be ways to recover but with more time passing the chances decrease.
Two days ago a staff member brought us her laptop with a lot of very important material on it and it looked like the information might be lost. I gave her my usual lecture about the value of doing a backup and she looked at me and said that backing up isn't really practical for her. I looked at her and asked if it was practical to lose her valued files. Usually it is not. It means redoing the work or regathering the material or it means gone forever.
The purpose of back up is to have the file in two or more places so that if something happens to the primary copy you can retrieve another copy of it. To make this useful you should be doing this at least daily, once a week or even once a month if your files don't change often.
So what can you do to back things up.
There is one good article on this forum to start with if you have Widows 8. But there are other things you can do easily.
Burn it to a CD or DVD - put in a disc and drag your files to it. Then click on "Burn" or "Write" the disc. Use multiple discs if needed. Label and date the disc.
Use backup program -Some windows versions have a convenient backup program or you can buy them or download them for free. They help and coordinate the backup process.
"Use Cloud storage - Cloud storage mean storage out there on the internet. Your Skydrive or Google drive are good options. One of my favorite is dropbox. Drag and drop copies to these storage devices and that's it. All for free.
The other benefit of cloud storage is that they do backups so you are covered twice. You can restore the files they back up in case you delete them. "
Your own hard drive - a temporary backup is to make a folder on you own hard drive and copy files to it. If you lose your computer though, both copies are gone but it is better than nothing. Not a great option.
USB drive - A USB drive is cheap and easy to use. Drag and copy your files to the USB drive so you have two copies of your files. Don't forget to eject the USB drive properly to avoid damage.
Email - If you have a file or two you have created of found you can email them to yourself for a quick convenient backup method.
There are other methods but start with these. They are easy and free, or very cheap and will save you when the inevitable happens. And I promise you that at some time you will lose files. I make my living on it. Please do your backups.
Sometimes it is a failure of a physical component and sometimes it is the result of virus, malware or accidental deletion. Sometimes there may be ways to recover but with more time passing the chances decrease.
Two days ago a staff member brought us her laptop with a lot of very important material on it and it looked like the information might be lost. I gave her my usual lecture about the value of doing a backup and she looked at me and said that backing up isn't really practical for her. I looked at her and asked if it was practical to lose her valued files. Usually it is not. It means redoing the work or regathering the material or it means gone forever.
The purpose of back up is to have the file in two or more places so that if something happens to the primary copy you can retrieve another copy of it. To make this useful you should be doing this at least daily, once a week or even once a month if your files don't change often.
So what can you do to back things up.
There is one good article on this forum to start with if you have Widows 8. But there are other things you can do easily.
Burn it to a CD or DVD - put in a disc and drag your files to it. Then click on "Burn" or "Write" the disc. Use multiple discs if needed. Label and date the disc.
Use backup program -Some windows versions have a convenient backup program or you can buy them or download them for free. They help and coordinate the backup process.
"Use Cloud storage - Cloud storage mean storage out there on the internet. Your Skydrive or Google drive are good options. One of my favorite is dropbox. Drag and drop copies to these storage devices and that's it. All for free.
The other benefit of cloud storage is that they do backups so you are covered twice. You can restore the files they back up in case you delete them. "
Your own hard drive - a temporary backup is to make a folder on you own hard drive and copy files to it. If you lose your computer though, both copies are gone but it is better than nothing. Not a great option.
USB drive - A USB drive is cheap and easy to use. Drag and copy your files to the USB drive so you have two copies of your files. Don't forget to eject the USB drive properly to avoid damage.
Email - If you have a file or two you have created of found you can email them to yourself for a quick convenient backup method.
There are other methods but start with these. They are easy and free, or very cheap and will save you when the inevitable happens. And I promise you that at some time you will lose files. I make my living on it. Please do your backups.
