The tenth annual World data backup day is March 31, 2021. World data backup day is a time to remember to backup the data on your computer, your phone and other mobile devices. Data backup is a not-so-hard way to avoid a disaster because your chances of losing your data are pretty good.
Consider the following:
- 30% of people have never backed up
- 113 phones lost or stolen every minute
- 1 in 10 computers are infected with a virus every month
- 31% of PC users have lost all of their files due to events beyond their control
- 140,000 hard drives crash in the US every week
- 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down with 6 months of the disaster
Your data is worth more than your devices
Hardware is cheap and getting cheaper. What is the value of the new business plan you spent three months writing? The music and movies you have on your devices? The cute video of your kid’s trip to the beach or your puppy being a goof? You can get a new computer or phone, but you cant replace those important files without a backup.
There are several scenarios that could take place where having a backup of your data would be useful:
- Your phone gets stolen, and you lose all your pictures and videos.
- An external hard drive crashes, deleting your home videos.
- You forget your laptop in a cafe and you’ve lost all your homework.
- A virus holds your data hostage until you pay to remove the restraints.
- You accidentally delete something important,
What to do?
The advantage of having your important data backed up off-site, away from your home or office, is that it’s safe from theft, fire, and other local disasters. When you backup your data, you’re making a second copy of files you don’t want to lose. Should something happen to the originals, you can restore the data backups to your computer or mobile device with a backup.
Your data backup options
There a 2 types of cloud services to hold you data backups. The first is a cloud storage service for keeping your data safely backed up online. A cloud storage service a place to selectively upload important files that you need to keep off of your physical device.
If you are a Microsoft 365 customer – OneDrive cloud back up is included in most plans.
If you prefer Google, Google Drive is a cloud backup option to investigate.
iCloud is cloud storage for Apple devices.
There are lots of other cloud storage services to pick from.
Some argue that using these services gives the tech-titans more access to your data. If that concerns you there is a second option. Cloud backup services let you backup data automatically and on a schedule. There are many Cloud Backup services to chose from as well.
When backing up to the cloud be sure you understand level of encryption they offer. When you encrypt data, you encode it so only authorized people can read it. It is up to you to keep your backup secure. Use a strong password and choose the 448-bit option, the maximum encryption offered by many providers. It would take a computer millions of years to crack the encryption and gain access to your data.
Don’t forget to test your data back up
Remember that you haven’t really backed anything up unless you can restore it.
Many people are unable to restore their data backup because they forgot or lost their decryption password – Keep it somewhere secure – But not in your back up. Or they never did a practice restore so they simply weren’t practiced enough in using their tool to use it reliably – when the pressure was on.
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Whether to a USB drive, an external drive, the cloud or a private server, backup all that important data somewhere safe. Do this often.
Treat restoring data back ups like a fire drill – practice being safe before the real thing happens and you aren’t fighting against both fear and unfamiliarity at the same time.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
