Backing Up Your Hard Drive

This guide has only 1 purpose to make you think about all the information you have stored on your computer

I have spent 20 years having conversations with people regarding the loss of really important Data. Forgive me if my guide is blunt but this is a really important issue. We tend to take for granted all the information we have stored on our computers and forget to remember how difficult life would be if one day we woke up and it was all gone.

We all hold critical information on our PC or Mac. Digital Music, Digital Photographs, Movies, Important Documents the list goes on. What would happen if you get up one morning switch on your computer and the drive has failed?

Sheer panic, how do I get my information back? can I get my information back? If you have got to this stage at best you are going to cause yourself some huge amounts of stress and at worst if you need the data so badly you are going to end up with a huge bill for data recovery. When I mean huge I mean hundreds of pounds.

Lets start at the beggining

Your data is not covered under the warranty of your hard drive. This includes both the hard drive in your computer and any external hard drives that you have. All that is covered is the drive itself so there is no use hoping that the warranty will cover the cost of the data recovery.

Secondly if you buy an External Hard Drive to clear up some space on your internal drive ie take 20Gb off the Internal Drive and copy it onto the External this is not a back up, its original data. Think about it a back up means you have a copy of the data. Once you delete it from the internal drive then the External Copy is not a back up its the original content.

The solution is very simple make copies of your Data so if you lose one drive you have the information stored on another.

For example my Laptop has a 60Gb Internal Hard Drive. I have a 60Gb External Hard Drive and I simply back up the content from my Laptop to my External Hard Drive once a week. I downloaded a piece of free software off the internet and once a week it comes up and asks me if I want to do a back up. I click yes and job done.

My picture library going back 5 or 6 years is over 100Gb. I keep it on 2 x Portable Hard Drives both of 100Gb each

My music library is around 40Gb and again I keep two copies on 2 x 60Gb Portable Hard Drives.

The other alternative of course is make copies to DVD or CD but always keep a copy.

A lot of people say well I would but it's too expensive to have so many drives. It's really down to scale of importance. You can buy a 60Gb Portable hard drive for 28 pounds or a 100Gb for 37 pounds which is surely not expensive when it comes to saving your information. In fact a 160Gb Desktop Hard Drive will only cost you 30 pounds so if you have the space this has to be the best 30 pounds you have ever spent if its going to help you in the future.

All I want you to do is THINK. What if I woke up tomorrow and all my data had gone how much impact would this have on me? If I were to ask any user who had lost all there data through a hard drive crash, if I could turn the clock back and charge you 30 pounds to buy a drive to make a copy of your data would you do it ALL would say yes, truth is I could for some say 300 pounds or even more

Think about it that's all I want you to do. If it has made you think then please give the guide a vote otherwise I have no idea if it is serving its purpose.

As always if you have any questions about the guide or if you need any further advice about saving your Data then please email us or give us a call