What is Backup

What is Backup? – This is the probably the most important thing you can do. The most valuable asset is the data stored on the server or laptop, the hours of work, the photos you can’t go back and retake, the Quickbooks file with all your accounts in it. With hard drives regularly failing and corrupting requiring the Data Recovered This is the one way to insure yourself against that.

We can advise on the best type of backup for you individual requirements, call us today to get the ball rolling 0117 369 4335

Here’s a little information on the different types of backup:

Backup def: backup is an up to date copy of an important document, photo, or email stored in another place, i.e on another computer, on a memory stick

Online Backup – this is where your files and folders are encrypted (changed so nobody else can read them) then sent across the Internet to a very secure server, so should you lose you computer, your files can be retrieved from the Internet to a new computer.  (This also counts as an Offsite backup see below)

Local Backup – This is how it sounds, a backup onto a hard drive/CD/DVD/Memory Stick located in your business or home. This is a very good start for backing up.

Offsite Backup – This can be a hard drive you take home at night from work (or a drive you leave at work if you take a laptop home with all your files)  So in the case of a fire or theft, you have your files, photos, word docs, excel workbooks, whatever they may be safely in another physical location.

Common Backup misconceptions -

“I have backed up all my files onto the D drive on my laptop” – Most laptops have only one hard drive, when you look at my computer there may be a D drive, but that will be a Partition (a sectioned off part) of the main hard drive. Acer, Sony and Lenovo (IBM) laptops tend to have this. The reason they set this up is so that if you have trouble with Window Vista not starting due to a software problem, you can recover the windows part (C drive) and keep your files that are on the D drive. This is all good unless the hard drive becomes corrupted. If the hard drive gets corrupted or fails, you’ll need Laptop Data Recovery which we can do, but we would rather you backup your files.

“I bought an external hard drive and copied all my photos and documents on there” – Easily done, especially if the hard drive was also bought to free up space on the laptop. The trouble is there is still only one copy of the files, so should the external drive get dropped or just fail (from our experience the average external hard drive has a 2 yr lifespan) you’ll require Data Recovery.