The best, easiest and quickest way to back up your data is to simply copy and paste it to an external hard drive or online cloud storage service.
There are many different ways to back up your data. Some of them are free and many are paid for, but when in doubt and when you need to make sure your data is secure and protect from faults, I simply copy and paste it to an external hard drive.
External hard drives are inexpensive, offer plenty of room and re not complicated.
Simply plug them int your computer, create a directory in them with today’s date or the date of when you copy your files into it and copy the the files you want to back up from your computer and paste them into your external drive.
The same can also be done for a Dropbox or Google Drive strategy.
You can buy software out there which automates and archives the process, and a lot of them work very well. You can also do the simply copy and paste strategy in parallel to a more advanced backup strategy.
I do this all the time, and when everything fails you can always plug your external drive into any computer and access your files.
Keep it simple!
The Problem With Backup Software
There are usually two things which hinder any recovery process from a backup program and recovery process.
The Backup Recovery Software is too complicated
Each backup program does things its own way. It will have a very specific process it does which relies on a lot of different conditions too recovering you backed up files.
The most important will be is you will need the exact same application you used to backup, to recover your files. If you do not have the program because of a crash, can not remember the name of the program you used to recover or can not afford to but it again, you will not be able to recover your files from the backup.
The New System is too Different
SO lets say you successfully backed up your files. Your computer has crashed or died and you need to put your files on your new system. You have your back up software so your ready to install it on the new system. So what could go wrong?
One common problem we find is the backup application is no longer supported. Either the developer has lost interstt or moved on and hasn’t kept it up to date.
Your computer might have been Windows 7, but all new computers are Windows 10 and your backup/recovery software does not work on Windows 10 as the developer has not kept it up to date. So now what do you do?
Backup Recovery Software is Good
I don’t want to come across like I am not telling you to use Backup software, I highly recommend it.
I am just trying to outline the problems we have seen when using backup programs and give you something to think about when researching and looking for the correct backup application.
There are many good ones out there, but unfortunately they come in and out of existence on a daily basis.
Hence, when in doubt, copy and paste your files to an external hard drive or online cloud application, so no matter what computer or device you have or will have in the future, you can recover, and access your files.
