Have you backed up your computer today?
Image courtesy of Dropbox
Computer’s crash every day. Sometimes it’s an accident, spilt coffee on the keyboard, but more often it’s a fault in the internal hardware that results in a permanent failure. Your hard disk is like a vinyl record, complete with grooves and a needle, except that instead of the needle following the contours of the record, it is actually reading digital information stored magnetically. Over time the needle, the motor, or the surface of the disk itself can fail.
The most important rule of computing is to ensure that you are backing up your computer on a regular basis. The second is that you make two backups, and store one outside of your home or office. If your computer is destroyed by a fire or electrical surge or if there is a theft then the likelihood is that your locally stored backup will also be lost. A good rule is to have one local backup, such as your external hard drive, and one off-site backup.
Off-site backup solutions use cloud computing, to synchronize specific folders in your computer with a copy held on their remote servers. The cloud is simply the term given to the ability to store and access data via an Internet connection. There are lots of backup solutions available to computer users today, many of which are either free or a low cost. Dropbox is one of the easiest to use, and offers users 2GB of storage at for free.
The first thing to do is create a Dropbox account by visiting their website and clicking the Download Dropbox link. You can watch their introductory video for more information about the service if you like. Once you have downloaded and installed the software you create a Dropbox account. During the installation process you will create a Dropbox folder on your computer. All files saved in this folder will be backed up to the cloud, and you can even access them from other computers by logging into your account on Dropbox.com and entering your username and password.
If your backup needs exceed the free 2GB offered by Dropbox or if you prefer an offsite backup that backs up any and all of your computer’s folders, then Computer Troubleshooters can offer you an alternative home user solution that is much cheaper than Dropbox’s $10/month plan. We can backup your entire hard disk for as little as $2.70 per month using our unlimited backup service.
Please note that we do not recommend home user backup solutions for your business. Please call our office, drop by or email us to learn about our business level backups or if you would like more information about any of these home user backups. Visit our website for information on our computer repair and monthly computer network management services.
