Back it up
May 20, 2013, 12:00 PM | Updated: 12:00 pm
Today’s Data Doctors Tech Tip is a simple, but necessary reminder. Back It Up!
Last month, a Rutgers student posted a plea to a thief that stole the laptop. They didn’t care about the computer, but they were willing to pay $1,000 bucks for something on the computer.
Their thesis and 5 years of work, lived on that laptop and that laptop only. Can you imagine losing something so valuable, so fast? Neither could they, but it happened.
So how could this poor student have avoided the pain? A simple backup. Yes, simple.
We see people all the time that buy an external hard drive, call it a backup but the reality is, it’s not.
First: A backup means you can locate the file in more than one place. If you have an external hard drive and the document is only there, that’s not a backup.
It needs to live in your documents folder on your computer, and a duplicate needs to exist on the external hard drive.
If you’re working on an important document (like a thesis), you can always perform a save as or copy to a flash drive.
You can also use any number of free cloud services for those ultra important documents, and they’ll even backup automatically.
No matter what you do, do something. The worst kind of backup, is no backup.
Need help with your backup plan? We can help.
All you have to do is ask us at facebook.com/datadoctors.
