The top 3 reasons to back-up your computer

image by Marco Bellucci

Backing up your computer isn’t on most people’s top ten list of things to do when they want to have fun. It is also something that you tend to forget unless you have a system.

Here’s my top 3 reasons to have a back up system for your computer:

1. If you ever have a hard drive fail, you definitely want a back up in place.
2. If you need to reformat your hard drive, you will want a back up in place.
3. If you are moving your information to another computer, you will want to have a back up in place.

Yes, I know you can transfer from one hard drive to another quite easily and so #3 isn’t as urgent but it is still a good policy.

What kind of back up plans should you have?

There are as many options as there are people. But much of it depends on how much you need to rely on your data and what amount of time you might want to invest into backing up your system.

1. There are plans like Carbonite that cost about $55 annually and can be set up to automatically back-up every time you change a file. I had a business client whose operations depended on using Microsoft Word to create documents and she needed to have access to those files even years later. Her laptop was running incredibly slow and I suggested we reformat the hard drive. Fortunately, she was using Carbonite and every one of her files even dating back to the mid-1990′s restored perfectly.
2. You can also use an external hard drive and schedule your back-ups. The catch with this option is that your computer generally needs to be on at the scheduled time and some of the back-ups will slow down your computer. And they are known to fail without notice.
3. Another similar option is the jump drive that many students use to carry information from class to home and back again. Risks include potential failure or even loss since the jump drives can easily be misplaced.

There are many other options available but I think you will agree that there are very good reasons to have a back up system in place. Do you have more reasons you think you should have a back up system?