Backing up your Home data!

We are relying on computers more and more each day. Whether it’s digital photos, a music collection, important household financial data, we are becoming more dependent and bowing to technology. I say “Bowing” because that piece of metal with computer components has your life on it. In saying all this, one question comes to mind… “What happens when this hunk of metal won’t turn on or crashes? Where does my data go? well not to worry… You have a backup, right? People sometimes look at me strange when I ask them this question. Since I come from an IT background, it’s almost second nature for me to create a backup of my household data.

Finding the right solution to backup your data is as simple as going to your local electronics store. Corporations mainly use tape devices because of the ability to store large amounts of data on a single tape cartidge. For the home user, this is not a practicle solution. All computers, Macs or PC’s can have external hard drives connected through USB. This allows you to backup your important data. I recommend either Maxtor

Now that you have an external hard drive, you might need the help of a decent software package to actually backup your selected data. Some hard drives that you purchase might come with software to use for this purpose. I personally recommend SmartSync Pro. It’s not free, but well worth the money. If you are looking for a free solution, try out SyncToy by Microsoft.

Congratulations, you now can backup your precious data. The next question that you should ask yourself is… What happens if you have a fire in your house or a natural disaster like an earth quake, tornado which all could destroy a computer and external hard drives that you backup to. That’s right, the same concerns that businesses have also apply to your Financial data, your family photos, even your music collection that you spent your hard earned money on.

The simple thing to do is to get two or even three external hard drives hard drives like I mentioned above. Use one of the drives to backup and at the end of the month take it out of your house (out of state if possible), and give it to a friend or relative to keep until you bring the next one. If you do not have the luxry to go out of state, take the drive to your place of work, or to a local safety deposit box.

Nowadays, data is a very important part of everyone’s lives, shouldn’t you protect it?