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Protect your data with backup software

Guest post by: Marius A

Article Overview: Hard drives are marketed as reliable, but the reality tells a different story. It’s only a matter of time until a hard drive crashes and you lose all your important data if you’re not prepared. And even if your hard drive doesn’t fail due to physical errors, virus attacks, software or user errors, even theft threats intervene increasing exponentially the probability of losing your data.

Protect your data with backup software

Hard drives are marketed as reliable, but the reality tells a different story. It’s only a matter of time until a hard drive crashes and you lose all your important data if you’re not prepared. And even if your hard drive doesn’t fail due to physical errors, virus attacks, software or user errors, even theft threats intervene increasing exponentially the probability of losing your data. So why do you need a backup software? In almost every industry it is well known that the cost of prevention is less than the cost of repairing/fixing what went wrong. Even so billions of dollars are lost every year because of data loss. This is why you need backup software, and you need to have your data protected. This way if the inevitable happens, you can easily restore data from your most recent backup. There are many backup programs out there, so choosing one might be a difficult task. In any case, when you choose a backup application you have to be sure that it will make backing up as easy as possible, so that it won’t be a time consuming process on your side. What to look for in a backup software These are some key features that any good backup software should have, in order to ensure proper protection for your data and usability:

• Standard Zip Compression. Whenever your data is compressed by a backup program, it’s important that the format it keeps the data in is not proprietary, so that you can access the information without that particular program too. Since ZIP is one of the most popular archiving format, this is how the backup should be kept.
• Incremental backups. If you back-up regularly, it’s important not to back-up everything each time. This is where the concept of incremental backup proves useful, as it will back-up only what was changed since the last backup.
• Backup job scheduler. This would allow you to set a time and date when to run the backup, and the backup would run automatically. It’s one of the most useful feature as it would let you schedule backups and have backups run unattended.
• Data Encryption. It’s always good and safe to “back-up the backup”, meaning to have your backup protected with a password in case you accidentally lose the backup destination.
• Easy to use. The backup software has to be an easy to use interface, so that you won’t lose too much time figuring it out.
• Support and documentation. Support is important, and very important is how often the developers of the backup program release new versions and how they answer customer support questions.

The above features are some of the most important ones when choosing the a backup software, but in order to be sure you have the best backup software that fits your needs you will have to test it yourself. This is why always make sure a free trial is offered. Backup4all is a very popular backup software that offers a 30-day free trial, and passes every requirement from those mentioned above.

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Article Tags: backup software, compressed backup, file backup, folder backup



Related Forum Posts
Re: How do you back up your computer? - Seems like backup has definitely hit a nerve. Evan, thanks for sharing your experience with the Backblaze service. Regarding the time it takes to backup: * The initial backup will take a little while (one to two weeks for most users) depending on your Internet upload connection and the amount of data you have. You can click the "How long will my first backup take?" link to find out the estimate for you. * Future backups will be very quick as Backblaze will only backup new files and the pieces of those that have changed. Thanks! Gleb
Backing up data on Outlook - Hi Jen At the moment, I have 1 email account on Rogers Yahoo for personal use and 3 different emails for business (i.e. 2 on MS Outlook and 1 with Yahoo). However, I don't backup anything as I've never really had any problems yet. Can I ask what was the ineffective method used when trying to backup your Outlook data?
How to file on computers - The advice to back up your computers on a regular basis - even daily - is a sound one... but you should also check your backup system on a regular basis and make sure you can actually retrieve the data! Just because you run the backup application and get a beep at the end of it telling you it's been done... doesn't necessarily mean that it has been done. You're backup media may be corrupted - especially if its tape, I would think! The thing about keeping everything on your computer is that you then have to use your computer as a filing cabinet - and is everyone assiduous about saving their documents into the appropriate files? I'm afraid I'm not, and the time I've had to waste searching for documents hidden in the depths of my hard drive, when if I'd just filed them away properly to begin with, baffles the mind. And yet every time I lose a doc and spend hours looking for it (I also don't use a standardized system of naming which is very silly!), I swear to myself that I'll be more careful in future... but to date I never am!
Re: DropBox.com - Hey Evan, I just started using their service very recently. I'm currently using their free 2GB storage option. I mainly got it to send large-sized files to other people, as sometimes uploading to my web host server can become problematic and not work. I searched around for online storage options and landed on their site. Works great and very easy to share files with others. I currently have a 1TB external drive I backup all of my computer data on. Maybe someday I'll consider online backup, just for added protection of my files.
Re: How do you back up your computer? - I use Microsoft's free powertoy "Synctoy", which works great on files. I make two copies, one to a second internal disk and another to an external drive. I've also used it to move data from one computer to another with relative ease. It's not a full-blown program (can't edit some settings, just create and delete them), but hay, it's free and Microsoft maintains it. Windows is a shocker to backup, because of the way it handles settings with the registry. I wish Microsoft would gravitate towards UNIX-style systems already with superb file handling and keeping everything in files. A UNIX backup is a breeze, and so should a Windows backup be. By the way, has anyone tried to ... (gulp) ... restore? In a previous life, I've restored Windows backups and had to do major tinkering to make it work, especially if the original computer crashed and I had to restore elsewhere (Yikes!). Gal


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