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About 5 years ago I had a disaster with an old PC of mine and nearly lost everything – all the data from my business that I’d worked hard to build up and would have found very difficult to carry on without. I was relying on backing my data up onto CDs, so wasn’t doing it regularly enough. Fortunately the data was recovered from the computer before the hard drive had to be reformatted, and I had to copy all my data back onto it. It’s not an experience I’d want to go through again!
Since then, I’ve been fastidious about backing up and whatever the cost, it can’t replace the amount of stress I’d be under if losing my data happened again. In fact backing up is now really quick and easy and isn’t expensive at all – particularly when you think about how much it would cost an IT engineer to recover your data as well as the amount of lost hours of work if you did have a major problem with your computer.
In fact, I’m so worried about losing data that I back up twice! I have an external hard drive that my computer is plugged into and backs up each time I make a change to a file. This cost about £60 and can store up to 250GB of data. I also use a remote back up service, which I recently found and it’s great. It’s called SugarSync, is compatible with both PCs and Macs and has the added bonus of synchronizing all your computers (for example if you have one computer at home and one in your office), and you can also access your files on a Blackberry or iPhone. All for a whopping $5 per month for 30GB! In fact they’ve increased the hosting space since I took up my package, which was $2.50 per month for 10GB.
So all in all I’ve spent about £80 to back up all of my data on an external hard drive as well as remotely. Hopefully I’m well covered if my PC laptop or Mac decides to have a major breakdown and will be able to access all of my files no matter what happens! A small price to pay for peace of mind.
Sam
Thanks for the tip on SugarSync.
There seems to be a big difference between knowing what to do i.e. take regular back-ups and doing it.
Paul
Hi Paul
Thanks for your comment. Backing up is now so much easier than it was a few years ago when messing about with CDs was a bit of a pain! The Sugarsync service is great, I would highly recommend it and in fact if I’m working on my laptop, I tend to access my files through the Sugarsync file manager. If you’re out and about a lot, you can access your files on Sugarsync wherever you are as long as you have an internet connection. Backing up can so easily be automated with the latest technology, so really there’s no excuse not to!
[...] and more of our lives being entrusted to devices and the ‘cloud’, it’s easy to get lazy with back ups. Learning the hard way, by losing vital data, is no fun at all and the implications for your [...]