You might be wondering “how to backup your PC data“? The gadgets and devices that we use in the current digital age can be protected from data theft or damage with the help of the simple use of passwords or physical protection. You still cannot rule out the advantages of storing your personal and professional files on the official servers, laptops, or PCs. Even a small power failure or an attack on the server can wipe out your data in a few seconds. Keeping a copy of important data is too crucial if your whole business or career depends on it.
In this world of unexpected events, malicious stealers and prowling hackers backing up your data become highly imperative. Back up process can be a simple copy-paste of files to your pen drive or using some extremely sophisticated and stepwise third-party backup tools. You have to select the solution depending upon the importance of your data, the kind of threat it is exposed to, and the location of data which can be single or multi-location.
It is not only the data that needs to be backed up. For your convenience, you can extend your backup plan to the operating system and applications. You can include some selected software components, files, and folders in your backup strategy. Other kinds of data like your personal pictures, collection of music, digitized videos, documents, database, ERP, or an accounting package can also be hugely sensitive to be categorized as backable data.
Easy Techniques to Backup PC Data
External Drive
An external drive is a removable hard disk. Storing data on a hard drive that you can connect and detach at your own will is the simplest and basic kind of backup technique. Identify all your vital data stored in the hard disk and send them to your external drive which is visible as an additional drive in your drives window. Of course, you will select with ‘ctrl’ +click mouse arrow or ‘shift’+ click mouse arrow, then open the context menu with a right mouse button, select ‘send to’ into the drive representing the external drive.
The external drives offer you a huge memory in the range of 250GB to a few TBs at an affordable cost. Your backup needs and the size of your data are the guides to purchasing an external drive. You can define a frequency of weekly, monthly, or quarterly for your data backup. This very easy method of preserving the data in a flash drive or external drive can be a bit risky if you leave them at an easy-to-access place. It is prone to stealing or may get damaged if it falls down accidentally.
Network location
Organizations that own an intranet through a reliable network of computers, offer network drive as a backup location as one of the services to its employees. This technique is easy and dependable for backing up the data that is crucial for the smooth functioning of the organization. The employees can save their personal data as well, if the company includes this in their service policy. The users have to create a shared folder on the network and regularly save their files to this shared folder. As a user, you can overwrite the existing copy of data or can manage folders date-wise. The network administrator has access to all the backups.
Cloud storage
In modern times you don’t need to take a pen drive or an external drive carrying your data. Many companies offer cloud storage in different sizes for rent or free of cost and this is one of the best techniques to backup your PC data. The only limitation is that if you want to access the cloud-backed up data, you must have an internet connection. Creating up a backup is just like copying data from one location to another on your PC or laptop. Once you do this your data is written on the servers at their data centers. Since you are storing the data on a third-party server it is prone to theft if the service provider has some loopholes in the security of its data center. If the size of your files to be uploaded on the cloud is big it will take more time as well as internet bandwidth to complete the backup process.
Automatic Backup
Most of the operating systems have some backup utility. Windows too come with an easy-to-use facility to automatically back up your data and selected files. The same utility will help you in restoring it back whenever you need it. In Windows 7 or 8, the backup button is available in the start button. But in windows 10 the same option can be availed by going to the file history in the control panel and defining the schedule of your backups.
Backing up your Operating System
It’s a very common issue that we face as computer users. If power fails or some virus infects our machine the OS is the first thing to get corrupted, after which you cannot do any work. To tackle such problems you can do the following actions.
Restore Point
A simple and most reliable way to backup is to create a restore point for your system files. In Windows, open the control panel and click on recover to create a restore drive. In Mac OS you have to switch on the time machine to backup your system files.
Automatic Backup
In windows7/8 the utility backup and windows10 the file history option can be used to create a system image to back up the crucial data. This system image can be stored on a flash drive, an external drive, or a network location to restore your system anytime later
Image or Clone
Image or Clone is a dependable technique of backing up the complete hard drive and recovering the data and operating system if your system gets corrupted. You can download or purchase third-party tools to create a bootable image of a partition or the complete drive to be stored on any external media of your choice.
These backup techniques are quite easy to perform and ensure that you have a safe copy of your important data in case of any accidental delete or intentional damage. You must carefully plan your backup routine and implement one of these mentioned methods to backup your PC. If you ignore this important activity you may end up spending a lot from your budget to get the data recovered from a professionally trained person. Backup NOW, to avoid guilt later.
This is really helpful, thanks.
It works really well for me