Column: To backup or not to backup?

0

Commentary by Feras Mash

You buy into technology. You start writing documents, taking and saving thousands of pictures and videos, do budgeting for your home and office, create awesome playlists for the thousands of songs you’ve downloaded and saved during the last decade, and on and on.

Have you thought about “insurance” for all your data that is sitting on a piece of technology that very easily can fail or get destroyed at any time? What happens to all that data if that hard drive or computer gets hit by lightning, is stolen, gets ransomed by hackers or gets old and just quits?

It seems backup is not on most of our radar screens until it’s too late. I get so many customers with failed computers and crashed hard drives wanting their data back and get sticker-shocked when I tell them the data-recovery pricing starts at $500 and can reach several thousand dollars, with no guarantee the data can be recovered. And it gets even worse when they don’t have any backups and wonder why they never thought about it.

Well, would you think of owning a home and not insuring its content? Or a car or a boat? Stuff can be replaced, but data cannot. It costs, on average, less than 20 cents a day to back up all your data offsite through a reputable cloud-based backup provider, and it runs automatically without your intervention and keeps it all current and saved.

So, why not back it all up and have peace of mind? And don’t think saving your stuff on an external thumb drive is a good backup strategy, as those can fail, too.

Always backup data to the cloud, where it is safe, secure, encrypted and guaranteed to exist as long as you pay for the service.

Feras Mash is the owner of Computer Troubleshooters of Carmel and a contributing columnist to Current Publishing. For more, write him at [email protected].


Current Morning Briefing Logo

Stay CURRENT with our daily newsletter (M-F) and breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox for free!

Select list(s) to subscribe to



By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact
Share.

Current Morning Briefing Logo

Stay CURRENT with our daily newsletter (M-F) and breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox for free!

Select list(s) to subscribe to



By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact