Computer backups for personal or home office

by | Jan 3, 2014 | Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Remote Office

This Christmas Santa Clause finally decided to bring my 17 year daughter a new IMac Pro Computer, she was so excited and so was I! Over the years I keep telling me daughter she needed to back up her IPhone and PC pictures just in case she loses her computer or IPhone.

So this Christmas with her getting a new computer, I took the opportunity to educate my daughter the importance of backing up important data including the 1,000 pictures she accumulated on her old PC and IPhone. Just two weeks prior to Christmas, I purchased a terabyte hard drive made by Seagate at one of our local Costco Wholesale stores for $79.

Christmas day came and the computer came, however it was now time to help my daughter download her pictures onto the external hard drive and transfer to the new IMac. Big problem for dad when it came to uploading her pictures onto the IMac. This is where I stumbled miserably not knowing the IMac operating system. But after all are not Dads supposed to “fix things”!

I should have taken the Advice of Scott Spencer prior to Christmas. Scott is a senior marketing and brand expert with Convergent Marketing in Atlanta who’s firm is a total “Apple” shop. Scott suggested I set up an appointment for my daughter at the local Apple store Genius Bar, where my daughter can receive quality one on one training from an apple expert, not her Father!! The appointment is tomorrow, I will keep you posted.

This all leads me to continue the conversation about the importance of backing up data and what is the best solution for home computers or small home based business. We will talk about larger business in a future article, but for now let’s discuss the home computer.

So how best to back up a home computers data?

There are many technologies for implementing a regular and sound backup regime for a family’s home computers or a home based business. But there can be many problems, small devices such as the Seagate I bought can be exposed to conditions that cause failures more often than business class systems. Portable units are convenient and a good buy, but they lack any good security features such as password protection that could leave data open to theft. So what about ICloud for my daughters computer, Back blaze or Carbonite? Lots of options to select.

So here is where I turn to a few experts in the field, including David Gracey owner of Network 1 Consulting a 14-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA. I consider David an expert in this area and plus David has 3 children. Last year David wrote a blog on his topic.  Check it out:  http://network1consulting.com/tuesday-tip-protect-important-data-and-photos/

Bottom line: You can find a number of suitable choices for your home or small office that will vastly reduce the chances important data will be lost or a single disk drive failure. I use a combination of Back blaze, similar to Carbonite and an external hard drive I keep in a fire safe. I will probably set my daughter up with ICloud along with downloading her data onto an external hard drive.

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