The area of computer security most overlooked by home and small business users is the backing up of files. We regularly see distraught users who have lost everything on their computer and are desperately trying to recover hours of work such as theses, company bookkeeping, and wedding/baby/personal photos. Data recovery costs range from $100s to $1000s of dollars without any guarantee of success. For a small cost of $20 - $100 and a few minutes for installation, they could avoid the heartache and expense.
When planning for a well maintained and secure computer you should ensure you always have a separate backup of your valuable files. You then have immediate access to them should your computer be attacked or the files lost or damaged.
Some of the ways your files can be lost/damaged are:
• A virus or spyware may destroy or infect your files or data
• Computer hardware such as the hard drive may become faulty and inaccessible
• You or a family member may accidentally delete valuable data or files
• Data such as your e-mail file may become corrupted and unreadable
Having a good backup of all your important files can protect your data so that even if one of the above does happen you have immediate access to your files via the backups. Here are a few tips for home backups:
• Decide what is important to back up (see list below)
• Buy a good automatic backup program - we recommend an online service such as http://www.mozy.com. It is inexpensive and stores your data securely on line so you don't need to store CDs, DVDs, zip files, etc which can be lost, stolen or damaged.
• If you prefer to backup to CDs, DVDs, etc, then we recommend Acronis True Image which can be found at http://www.acronis.com. Acronis has other advantages such as ghost imaging which Mozy does not offer. See their website for more information
• Test your backups regularly to ensure you can recover the files from them
• Regularly check you are including new files in the backup
Here is a short list of files you may need to backup
• My Documents folder including My Music and Photos
• Any personal folders not stored in my documents
• Any book keeping folders (MYOB, Quick Books)
• Work folder
• Your e-mail address book
• Your e-mail file
• Your Internet favorites
• Documents stored on your desktop
