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Computer Backup and Recovery Strategies for Home
Users - Creating a Backup Plan
With technology today, you have a variety of
options of backing up your data. But before you
go out and spend your hard earned money on a
solution, you need to so some homework first.
This section will cover the things you need to
check on before you implement a backup plan.
The steps are:
-
Discover where your
data is
-
How much data do you
have?
-
How Often Does Your
Data Change?
-
How Critical is My
Data?
-
Can I re-create my
data?
Discover where your data is
Before embarking on backing up your data, you
must first understand where your data is and
what are you backing up. For example, do you
keep all your files under the “My Documents”
section, or have you created directories in
other places on your computer. Also, what
applications are you running? For example, I
use Peachtree for my financial applications and
Peachtree stores data by default under the
Program Files directories. Other applications
that you installed may store data in the
strangest places and you may have to go look for
them. Create a check list of all your
applications that you use and where they store
data. If you want to backup all the links you
created in your internet browser, you need to
find where they are as well.
How Much Data do You Have?
Depending on how much data you have, will
determine your backup strategy. If you are only
using Word and Excel for a few things such as
your resume and home budget, your backup needs
might be very simple and require very little in
storage. If you are running a home business,
your may have gigs and gigs of data to store and
backup. In order to determine how much data you
have, take your check list from step one and
find out how much data is in each of your
folders. For example, if when you have
identified locations of data, left click on the
folder and select properties. This will tally
up the number of files on this folder as well as
the size.
How Often Does Your Data Change?
How often your data changes will dictate how
often you run your backups and your archival
system. If you are updating your resume and
home budget once a week, then backing up once a
week might be sufficient. If you are running a
home business, backing up your data each and
every day will more likely be a solid choice.
Ultimately, there is no had and fast rule on
this other your level of comfort and how long it
took you to create the data. For example, if
you were updating your budget and it took 6
hours, you may want to back it up right away.
Also, if you just downloaded all your vacation
pictures to your computer and deleted them from
the camera, you may want to backup ASAP.
How Critical is My Data?
The criticality of your data will also dictate
your backup schedule. By this I mean, if your
data is critical to your life/business/etc, your
backups will be frequent, maybe even more often
than once a day.
Can I Re-create My Data?
One question that may come up is can I re-create
my data if I lost it. This will also help you
determine how often to back up. If you spent an
hour on a project and you cannot recreate it,
you may want to back it up immediately. If you
entered a few numbers of some bills into your
home budget, well then, maybe a backup could
wait.
Summary
There are any numbers of factors that will help
you determine your backup needs. Hopefully the
items listed above will help you create a good
checklist of what to backup and how often.
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