Backup Your Computer!
Computer problems, natural disasters, hacking. Oh my!
There are any number of things that can put the data you’ve so carefully collected and organized at risk.
Talk to a professional for advice on what to buy and how best to use it, but here are some things to think about:
What to Backup
- Full Backup: you copy everything. This will take the most storage and time
- Incremental Backup: you just copy the things that have changed since your last backup.
Where to Backup
- Local/Onsite: an external drive that you can plug into your computer and keep on hand for easy access. These are at risk if there is a natural disaster or theft where it is housed.
- Off-Site: an external drive that you store in a place other than where the computer is located. These, too, are at risk of natural disaster or theft, and may not always available for when you want to back files up (drive is at home while the computer is at the church).
- Online/Cloud: these are safe regardless of what happens to your physical computer or location. There are fees depending on size of files and degree of security.
When to Backup
Depending on the value of your data, you may backup files
- Weekly
- Daily
Depending on the storage system you use, these backups can be done
- automatically: set up to save on a scheduled basis or after changing a file
- manually: the user is entirely responsible for saving
