Now that we’ve covered the very basics when it comes to buying a computer that meets your needs, it’s time to cover how to protect your computer with backing up your data. Louis from intelliTECH has joined us once more to answer: What kind of backup do I need for my computer?
External Harv Drive VS Offsite Computer Backups
In today’s day and age, we’re collecting more data than ever. Keeping it safe and usable should be our number one priority.
We recommend using two forms of backups.
- The first method is a local back up where an external hard drive is used. Transferring files to an external hard drive is relatively easy. The major benefit of this method is accessibility. If you need to retrieve a file from anywhere on your system, it’s quickly there.
- The second form of back up we recommend is an offsite backup. An off-site back up literally means that your files are stored at a site different than the physical area of your computer or external hard drive.
These types of backups are useful in the event of a catastrophic event such as fire, flooding, or theft. If something happens to the device your files are originally stored on, most times, you’re still able to access them in some capacity.
More About Offsite Backups
When it comes to offsite backups, there are two types. Managed or unmanaged.
Unmanaged
Popular unmanaged offsite backups include Carbonite, Idrive, and Backplace. Having an unmanaged offsite back up is better than having none at all, but there is a certain level of risk involved. As these companies are collecting and storing your data, you’re never entirely sure if your data maintains it’s integrity or is usable when you need it. There’s a risk that your files may become gargled during the backup process and rendered unusable. This could be huge when you’re talking about complicated photo and video files, especially those created in the Adobe suite like Photoshop
As we said, an unmanaged offsite back-up is better than no backup, but we recommend going with a reputable managed offsite backup service.
Managed
With a managed offsite backup system, there is usually 24/7 monitoring of your data, daily emails letting you know what has been transferred and quarterly data checks where Dr. Back Up has you retrieve files to ensure their integrity and usability. For all of our backups, we use Dr. Back Up. We’ve trusted them with our data for years and have never had an issue.
While we’ve offered two major methods of backups, some prefer using file sync systems to save their data. The most common ones used are One Drive, Google Drive, and DropBox.
These can be a free or cheap alternative to previously mentioned methods. The free versions of these systems do not generally offer support when it comes to file corruption or retrieval, but paid versions of Dropbox does give you some degree of support when it comes to managing your files.
Most offsite computer backup systems will not pull from file sync systems. They only pull files directly from hard drives. We recommend using a combination of all three methods for maximum security of your files. Saving all files to an external hard drive, using a reputable managed offsite backup service to save and manage your file, then using a file sync system so that you can easily access your files from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.
Need some help? Schedule a call wit a Clone here.
