Charlie's Computers

How To Automatically Keep Your Data Safe

// February 20th, 2011 // Uncategorized

When most people drop off a PC in our shop for repair, they are worried about losing their data. In almost all cases we are able to fix the computer without data loss, but when hard drive failure has occurred we typically cannot do anything for you. Yes, there are companies that can possibly help by doing some hi-tech surgery for a couple thousand dollars, but you shouldn’t have to go through that. I’m sure you are already aware that you can burn data to CD/DVD’s or copy to an external hard drive, but we found that people don’t do it frequently enough. Here are a few ways you can keep data safe automatically:

Dropbox: I keep all of my most important documents in my dropbox. All of my job quotes, business documents, notes and even QuickBooks data are backed up automatically to my secure online portal by this little application. Once you sign up (for free) and install dropbox, you will find a new folder named “My Dropbox” within your My Documents folder. Simply start saving files there and they are instantly backed up! You can view your files online by visiting drobox.com, or even install an application on your iPhone, BlackBerry or Android phone. I have dropbox installed on my personal laptop and work PC which allows me to place a file in the work PC’s dropbox and have it automatically show up on the laptop. You get 2GB for free, which is plenty for a lot of people, but if you’d like to place pictures & music in there you may want to upgrade to there 50GB or 100GB plan for $9.99 and 19.99 per month respectively. I highly recommend taking 2 minutes to watch the video below which will explain it much better than I can.

So follow this link (or visit http://db.tt/1VoTrUS) to sign up! You’ll be glad you did.

Acronis True Image: This $50 application (for the home version) will probably save your butt one day. It can be configured to backup your entire PC on a schedule to an external hard drive or network resource. It can even e-mail you a report letting you know if it succeeded or not. I have it configured on my company server to backup every day at midnight. In the event of a hard drive failure, I could restore the full backup to a new hard drive and be up and running from the point of my latest backup in less than an hour. Without Acronis, I would be stuck re-installing the operating system, software, doing windows updates and restoring data and could be down for more than half the day. I really don’t worry about a crash because of this software. It’s great for home use, and highly recommended for businesses users. The latest version offers a non-stop backup feature and a paid online backup method worth looking into. Here is a youtube video reviewing it:

Check it out over at http://www.acronis.com

Windows 7 Backup: The built in backup feature of Windows 7 is pretty awesome. It’s similar to Acronis, but lacks a few features. It does create full system images that can save you a ton of time after hard drive failure. You can also choose to just backup your most crucial files and folders. The biggest complaint I have with the Windows 7 backup is the inability to e-mail a log after completion. This means that you’d have to manually check the status of your last backup by opening the application. Having a message waiting for me in my inbox saying “Successfully Backed Up” or “Backup Failure” is a very nice feature of Acronis and I hope Windows Backup incorporates it in the future. You also can’t backup to a network location unless you have Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate. If you have Windows 7 and want to give it a shot, then open it up and give it a whirl! The quickest way to find it is to click on your start menu and type “Backup” in the text field at the bottom labeled “Search programs and files”. An application named “Backup and Restore” should appear at the top of the start menu, give it a click. Once opened it will walk you through the backup process.

These are just a few examples of free/low cost solutions for keeping your data safe. The best thing you can do is keep duplicates of your most important files. I find that a lot of people will move (instead of copy) all of their files to an external hard drive only to have that drive fail one day. The smart thing would be to keep those files on your PC and a duplicate of them on the external. This can be done manually, or with an application like Windows 7 Backup and Acronis. Using dropbox will automatically place the duplicate file on the internet and on another PC if you want. We hate telling people that their data is gone forever. Please take the time to help yourself and one day when you’re computer breaks you can rest assured that you didn’t lose those important files.