The year is quickly coming to a close, which means it’s time for your end-of-year data backup. Routinely backing up data is the best way to avoid the feeling of crushing loss should something happen to your computer. Whether you’re an individual or the owner of a business, it’s essential to backup your data, either on your own or through the use of data management services. Doing a year end backup ensures that you have all your data from the past year saved, and you can move forward into the new year with a clean slate.
Why Do a Year End Backup?
Whether it’s sensitive financial information or photos of your child, you save files on your computer because they’re important to you. If your computer fails or your hard drive crashes, you can try to take it to get repaired. You may even be able to recover some of your lost data. However, that’s not always the case. The easiest way to recover your lost data is to restore it from a recent backup.
Eventually, all hard drives fail. In fact, according to one study, 20% of hard drives failed after just the first four years. At six years, that number jumps to 50%. Of course, a hard drive crash doesn’t need to be nearly as devastating if you routinely backup your files.
When you own a business, the amount of data to backup increases exponentially. That’s where data management services can become really beneficial. By employing a managed service provider, you can ensure that all your business’ data is encrypted and safeguarded digitally. Doing a full data backup at the end of the year allows you to relieve storage space on your network, but still keep the data accessible should you need to access it again.
What Data Should You Keep?
The data you choose for backup depends on your personal needs. Save sensitive information, like financial documents, business-related files, and anything with an account or identifying information on it. Businesses should store things like employee records, client files, and financial information. An individual may choose to back up word documents, photos, video, or music files. Essentially, if the file is something you’ll dearly miss, then you should definitely back it up.
Old software updates, obsolete text or word files, and apps you no longer use would qualify as data you do not need to backup. In fact, deleting these types of files from your hard drive can free up space and allow it to function more efficiently.
Where Should Your Data Be Stored?
Data backups can be stored on an external hard drive or USB flash drive, depending on the amount of data. It’s not recommended to backup your data to a different drive on the same computer because if something happens to your hard drive, it’s likely to wipe out the data on the rest of your computer as well. Keeping your backup on an external drive means that no matter what harm befalls your computer, that data is likely still safe. If you’re concerned about fire or flooding, you can even purchase hardy external drives that are resistant to damage or keep it in a fire-safe box.
For many businesses, storing data on an external hard drive is not a logical or cost-effective solution. Instead, they turn to data management services offered by many IT and computer repair companies. These managed services often utilize cloud backup, which encrypts the data and stores it digitally. Managed services are a great solution for small to medium sized businesses. They can safely store a large amount of data, often for a very affordable monthly fee, and leave business owners free to worry about more important things than data backup.
Data Management Services
It’s not a question of if you should backup your data, but a question of how often. Doing at least a yearly backup can save both the individual and the business owner from a major headache should anything happen to your computer or network. It will also allow you to delete unnecessary or redundant files and move into the new year with a cleaner, more efficient computer or network.
If you’re a business that needs data management services, look no further than Bay Computing and Consulting Services. In addition to our backup and recovery, we offer elite managed services for small businesses. To learn more, give us a call and find out how we can help you!