But I don’t need to back up anything
This was the cry from a recent customer, when I asked if they had a backup – they hadn’t – which was why I attended the site in the fist place – to recover their ‘lost’ data!
If you need data recovery or backup services, just contact UKtech and we will do the rest.
Believe me, you need a backup!
If you use a computer regularly, it is almost certain you have some data you don’t want to live without. In fact, that’s the only question you need to ask yourself:
Can I live without my emails, documents, passwords, photos, music, letters, videos etc?
If you are convinced already, and just need to know how, look here.
Having spent decades in IT support, I can unfortunately recall many conversations that ended with me saying,
“I’m sorry, but you have lost the lot – recovery is not an option”.
This, in spite of the fact that I have been a ‘backup evangelist’ all my life – it’s just people lead busy lives and often leave the backup question until it’s too late.
All your data (emails, letters, documents, photos, music etc), are stored on a hard disk drive, inside your computer. These drives are literally small metal boxes, that contain mechanical circular disks, that are spinning on an axle – rather like a wheel on a car. In addition, there are other components inside the hard drive case that are very fragile and won’t take much abuse to cause permanent damage.
‘Solid state’ or SSD disk technology is also prone to catastrophic failure.
Eventually, all disks will wear out – it’s just a matter of time. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to determine when a disk will fail, with any degree of accuracy.
So the only solution at present is to ‘backup’ your disks.
‘Backup’ merely means copying the data on one disk, to another disk. Then you have the same data on two physically different hard disks.
Backup methods are normally based upon sets of assumptions – e.g if you have two copies of your data on two hard disk, it is very unlikely both disks will fail simultaneously. So if one disk fails, you can recover your data from the other disk.
However, this method does not cover you from viruses, fire / flood / theft etc. Industry best practice suggests having three basic copies of your data:
- One ‘live’ – the data you use every day
- One local backup – for quick recovery should the need arise
- One ‘remote’ or ‘off site’ backup – should the other two fail. (theft etc)
What type of backup you need is determined by several things:
- How much data you need to back up
- The frequency each backup runs
- Your level of paranoia / business needs
- Your budget
More about how to backup here.