Backup Data On Your Laptop

If you were to look at past statistics regarding the information that has been lost in regards to laptop computers, you would find yourself amazed. Even though this information can be astounding, many of us still don’t take the time to back up the information on our laptops.

To put it in simple terms, nothing in the computer industry is fool proof. Hard drives can crash, the laptop can get stolen, or it can even be dropped and rendered useless. To ensure that we are never left without our precious data, we should always create a backup of our information.

There is no mistaken the fact that over a million laptops have been stolen over the years in the United States alone. Anytime a laptop is stolen, chances are that it won’t be recovered. If the information wasn’t backed up, then the owner will be left with no laptop – but more importantly – no backed up data either.

Just like you can with desktop computers, you can also create a backup of the data on your laptop as well. You can use online services, back it up remotely, or use several other methods to ensure that you keep all of your data. Preserving your data is something you should really look into, especially if you have business material on your laptop.

The best way to go about backing up your data and files is to burn them to a data CD. Data CDs can hold up to 700 MB (Mega Bytes) of data, which means a lot of files. To back things up this way, all you need is a CD/RW burner in your laptop, which most of the newer ones come with.

The only drawback to laptops is the fact that they don’t offer near as much storage or security measures as a desktop PC. Desktop computers have a lot more power, and they can also do things (including backups) in a fraction of the time.

The laptop computer was designed for on the go use, which is the main reason why people don’t really think about backing up their data. When the thought finally does come to mind, it is normally too late to do anything about it.

As mentioned above, the easiest and quickest way to backup your laptop data is to use an online backup service. Depending on your connection to the Internet, it can take anywhere from several minutes to several hours. Although it may take you a little bit of time, you’ll have the satisfaction in knowing that your data is there if something should happen.

Whether it’s for your business or personal use, you can’t go wrong backing up your data. You should always create a backup of your data at least once a month, even more than that if you have a lot of important information that you add to your laptop on a frequent basis.

by David Gracey

Although all of our clients are Atlanta-based businesses, I’m going to talk today about something that is important to everyone: protecting the data on your home computer.  In the business world we have specialized staff and advanced data protection solutions that keep companies up and running.  But for someone’s home computer, protecting one’s important electronic files and photos is left up to the individual.

The home computer has become the storage vault for family photos, important spreadsheets and electronic documents which are valuable for mostly sentimental reasons.  Because of the rising popularity of home video equipment and digital cameras, the home computer is now the central repository for important family events and milestones.  If the computer were to be destroyed in a fire or other disaster, or (more likely) the computer were to crash, this valuable information could be gone forever.  The good news is there are several inexpensive and easy ways in which to protect your data.

The first step in getting a good data backup solution in place is to determine how much data you need protected.  A quick way to do this is to look at the amount of used space on your hard drive.  This method shows ALL things stored on your computer, including program files which don’t need to be backed up, so it’s greatly overestimated.  But this gets you a pretty good idea of how much is being used.  If you know where all of your data is stored, you can drill down to the subfolders to determine how much is being stored.  Photos generally represent the vast majority of the amount of data because pictures take up a lot of storage space.  If you can find where your photos are stored, you’ve got a pretty accurate assessment of your data size.

In the picture below, I’ve used about 55GB of space on my hard drive.  Get to this screen by clicking on the “Computer” icon on your desktop or click START > COMPUTER.

There are several ways in which to backup important data.  Here are the two most popular:

Manual backup:  This method of backup relies on a physical device and is fairly inexpensive to implement.  It involves going to a retail store such as Best Buy or Office Depot and purchasing a USB flash drive or external hard drive.  The capacity of the drive should be determined by the amount of data that needs to be backed up.  Flash drives are more expensive on a “per gigabyte” basis, but they are smaller and now have enough capacity to handle some of the smaller document libraries.  Once you’ve purchased the proper size drive, you need to copy your files to it using Windows Explorer.  It’s easy and quick, assuming you know where all of your data is stored.  Make sure you take your drive offsite for storage so if a fire destroys your house, it doesn’t take the backup device with it.  Every few months, run the manual copy again so you ensure your data is fairly current.  Restoring files is very quick with a flash drive.

Online service:  There are several online data backup services, which call themselves “cloud solutions” due to the popularity of this marketing term.  The two most popular are Mozy.com and Carbonite.com.  Both work in very similar manners and are priced competitively.  With these solutions, you first open an account with the service, select your payment method and then download a small program that runs on your computer.  After an easy installation, it scans your computer for photos, documents and other data files and marks them for backup.  Then it begins copying the data to the offsite vault, which can take up to a week, depending on the speed of your Internet connection.  Once it is setup, the program automatically backs up any new files added to your local hard drive.  The cost of the service is around $60 per year.  Recovering all of your data can take several days with this solution.

I’ve used the Carbonite backup solution for about 2 years now and it works great.  It also saved me time when I purchased a new computer and moved all my photos over to it.

Network 1 Consulting is a 14-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA.  We become – or augment – the IT department for professional services companies: law firms, medical practices and financial services firms.  Our IT experts can fix computers – but what our clients really value is the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firm.  This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly.  We take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.