Is this the year you will finally do backups?

I know, I know, I nag everyone horribly about backups. However, every year at least one of my friends, relatives or clients, despite my nagging, loses some important files due to hardware failure.

A REMINDER – ALL HARD DRIVES ARE SUSCEPTIBLE TO FAILURE!

They don’t have a back up and I always ask, why?

Usually the answer is either:

I forgot how to do it.

Or

I meant to do it, but I just didn’t have the time.

Now you all know I’m a VERY frugal person, I have to be. However sometimes it’s worth paying a little for something that makes life easier. So I decided to research backup software, to find something that might solve these two issues.

It needs to be:

• ·         Easy to set up and use
• ·         Capable of running a backup on a schedule

My favorite is this one:

EaseUS ToDo Backup

https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/personal.html

There is a free version, however the free version dos not back up or restore Outlook email files, so if that is important to you, consider paying for the version that does. It’s US$29

It’s easy to set up and there are even some decent YouTube tutorial videos for those of you who like to have a visual guide.

You can also schedule full or incremental backups. The one caveat is of course that you need another drive to back up to. You could purchase an external USB drive and leave it plugged in all the time – which really is a set it and forget it solution. However, if the disaster that strikes is not just a failure of the main hard drive, but, say, a system wide virus, or physical damage, that external drive will be lost as well. If, instead, you can simply remember to plug in your external drive at least once a week, perhaps one night at bedtime, and set the backup schedule to run at, for example, 1:00am (at least that one night a week) you could then store that drive away from your main PC the rest of the time.

Do you need backup software?

No, not really. You can do all of this manually. The problem is that many people simply don’t. So possibly a solution that required only one action (once the initial backup options are set) and that is to plug in a drive once a week or so, would make more people do it.

The sad thing is that a lot of people think they don’t have much of importance to back up – but when they lose everything they suddenly realize they were wrong.

Backups are essential! Every computer user should know how to do it.

Realistically I don’t have time to log in and do a backup regularly for every computer user I help. I’m happy though to help someone get set up the first time and set up a good back up schedule.

Let this be the year you finally plan a good schedule for backups!