Wednesday 1 April 2009

Do you back up your files often enough?

If you have ever lost your hard disk, you will know how horrible it is to lose some or possibly, but hopefully not, all of your files.

Most people back up their files on the hard disks on external hard disks, but unfortunately a lot of people are also like me and forget to do it as regularly as they should.

One solution for lazy and/or forgetful people like me is to back up your files online.

If you do a search for online backup providers you will find dozens of them. The one I use is called Mozy and it is really simple to use and relatively cheap - click here for a comparison of some of the better known backup providers.

I don't have to think or mess around with anything; the backups are done every day as long as my PC switched on is on and has an Internet connection.

The program just backs up new files or files that have changed since the last backup (known as an incremental backup).

A word of warning though, the first backup you do can take days and days... and a few more days because the backup program has to upload all your files first! Once it's finished though the increment backups usually only take a few minutes.

Fortunately, hard disks don't often go phut, but the last time mine did I was in the middle of writing a book and I probably would have lost several weeks' work because, as I've already mentioned, I'm not too good at backing up my files on the external hard disk I have. Luckily, I only lost a few hours work and was able to restore the units I'd written from the remote server where my files were stored.

2 comments:

Johanna said...

Like you, I didn't, but now use Dropbox and it's wonderful. Just my kind of app - not another thing to think about , it just works in the background. In fact it's one less thing to think about. Love it!
Johanna

Anne Hodgson said...

Me too! What I like most about it is that it allows me to get files from my ancient Windows desktop to my Macbook. :)