Backups are a critical part of managing your digital data. Let’s start with a “cry test”.😭

Ask yourself:

1. Where is my data normally?
2. Do I have a backup?
3. Will you cry if you lose that data? (Not if you are Data🖖)

If you don’t know the answer to 1 or 2, you’ll need to figure that out first.

It could be devastating nowadays if you lose data considering how much we rely on it. Precious photos, your financial records, work data, etc.. If you are okay with the data loss, there are still things you need to know protecting your data.

What does it mean to have a backup?

Simply put, it is to have a second copy of the data. There are many ways to achieve this. I’ll ignore how things were done historically. Gone are the days of burning CDs or niche tape drive systems.

1. Making a second copy on the same computer. Why? What if you accidentally deleted or changed a file inadvertently? Hopefully, you made a copy of it.  The con is that it will take extra space. There are ways to recover old versions, so this is not as important to have. However, this is not pointless. In fact, I employ this method to create multiple copies on a monthly and yearly basis, in case I want to see what the state of my data was in the past (ideally on a second physical drive in the same system). But what if your computer gets destroyed or lost?
2. Having a second copy on an external drive or USB. Keep it separate. Pros: Lose your device, you won’t lose your “most” of your data. Cons: There is always some manual work to keep your data up-to-date. If you are traveling, you probably would want to keep your backup at home, but that’s when you want to have a copy of your newest data. Also, you can still lose all your data if your house burns down. There are other techniques that takes care of the cons*.
3. Using cloud services. Pros: Instantly have a 2nd copy in a secure reliable environment. Access your files from any device. Cons: Needs a paid service for enough storage. Needs an internet connection. Potential for someone to access your data without adequate security precautions. (Though I would argue that a typical person using external storage is more vulnerable.)

*I use other software to create live copies of my data to my family’s computers so I actually have three copies in three separate physical locations. Not feasible for most people, but not too hard to setup. All automatic, always on.

However, having online backups doesn’t protect you from another common mistake: Accidental deletions.

For example, you may have deleted a folder of your precious photos. Alas, you discovered that the files also disappeared on the cloud. The cloud or other file synchronization software makes a live copy of the state of your files. But understand that you can actually restore deleted files on cloud storage services. There could be situations where you may not have noticed the data was deleted and after a few weeks, the data will not be recoverable even from the cloud services. So employing all these techniques is a good idea.

Your may have heard of RAID storage solutions. What is this? How this works is that you will have more than one drive in the system and they work together making your storage drives function more robustly and often improve performance. In most configurations, suffering a mechanical failure of a drive will be recoverable. Drives will wear out or break down. Having a backup will help in this case, but a RAID array allows minimal downtime and can typically be recovered seamlessly. More on this in another Tech Guide.