BACKUP YOUR COMPUTER FILES

BACKUP YOUR COMPUTER FILES

 

How Do You Use Your Computer?

Computers are wonderful devices:

  • Opening up our worlds to communicate with friends and loved ones by e-mail, Facebook, and video calls.
  • Allowing us to see our bank balances and pay bills online.
  • Entertaining us with YouTube movies, Netflix movies, and online music like Spotify.
  • Offering us office tools like word processing, spreadsheets, and slide show software.
  • Downloading files sent to us.

 

Where are Your Files Stored?

Many computer services offer “views” of your data that reside on servers elsewhere, such as e-mail, Facebook, banking information, movies and music. The data does not live in files on your computer.

Other computer application software creates files that you can save on your computer hard drive, such as photos, PDFs, and attachments in emails, documents and spreadsheets that you created with your office software. These files reside in “library folders” on your computer: downloads, documents, pictures, music, and videos.

 

What Can Happen To Your Files?

Bad things can happen to your computers, especially as they age. The hard drives that store your data files can fail, power outages can “scramble” the indexes that provide access to your files. Should any of these bad things happen, you could lose your documents, photos and downloaded files if they are not backed up.

 

Why Backup?

Backing up your files, either periodically or continuously, provides an external copy of your files as of the date of the backup. This backup copy can be used to recover your files on a new or rebuilt computer.

 

Periodic Backup

You may chose to manually copy your files periodically to an external hard drive. These connect to your computer using a USB port, can hold between 8GB and 2000 GB of data, and cost between $6 and $100. Safely remove the device when the backup completes, put it in a safe place and remember to backup again at a later date.

 

Continuous Backup

You may choose to use a service to continuously backup your files offsite. Continuous means that as your files change, those changes are made to your backup copy automatically. This backup can be accessed with credentials set up by you to recover your files. I like the continuous backup service from Carbonite because it is affordable at $80 a year and allows you to backup an unlimited amount of files.

 

Don’t get caught without a backup. You will regret losing your files. Contact Linda if you need help.

 

I am committed to protect your computers at an affordable price. Thank you for trusting me to keep your computers healthy. Contact us at 239-567-0104 when it is time to renew your protection software, or if you need computer and internet help. Be well.

 

By Linda Lindquist, July 12, 2021 https://www.computerandinternethelp.com/contact-us