Backup your files

A good backup plan is a must for all computer users

 

As time goes on, we as PC users store more and more personal information on our computers. We are taking more digital photographs than ever, have huge collections of music, and also download movies to watch on our PC's or our portable devices such as Ipads and smart phones. A good number of people also store their personal finances and tax records on their home PC's. Unfortunately it seems that a small percentage of people regularly if at all perform a backup of all this data. They don't even think about it until something goes wrong, their hard drive goes bad, their PC is damaged by a power spike, there is a fire or natural disaster, or even the theft of their PC. It is often too late to recover the data from their PC when one of these events occurs. Years of pictures or thousands of songs accumulated over time are just lost.

 

Luckily there are several easy solutions to enable the backup of your important data. External USB hard drives are relatively inexpensive, typically in the range of $80-$150. This provides a local high speed form of backup. There are also online services that allow you to have an "offsite" backup, which can be important in cases of either fire or theft. These services, like the company Carbonite(www.carbonite.com), allow you to backup your files online to their servers. This method is slower than a local backup but also affords you some security against some sort of local disaster or damage to your home. If your computer is stolen or damaged beyond repair your files are safe on Carbonite's servers and you can retrieve them when you get a new PC.

 

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