Backups for beginners

We are creating all sorts of content round the clock that range from photos and videos to emails and documents. We interact with it, share it with friends, family and colleagues plus we store it on our devices and online. It’s a big part of our personal and work lives. They are invaluable assets and losing some or all of it could spell disaster.

Malware and ransomware aren’t the only threats. Other than deleting all your content or locking you out, you could also lose access to your data when your:

It won’t come as a complete surprise that backing up what’s important to you is a no brainer. And since backups are digital or physical copies of everything that’s important to you, it’s good practice to have multiple copies in different locations.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you store your backups in the cloud with Google, in a separate location on the same device, your home or office. Disaster strikes and it destroys your home or office, you lose internet connectivity and you can’t access Google or your device decides that today is the day to malfunction.

You could find yourself stranded if your backups are all in the same basket. It’s always a good strategy to keep copies of your prized possessions across multiple devices, cloud providers and locations. This way if things don’t pan out, you aren’t a sitting duck. Next up, backup currency. Backups are only as good as how recent they are.

For example, if you had backed up your files a year ago and you accidentally overwrite the document you had been slaving away at last week, backups aren’t going to be much help. You want to be backing up as frequently as possible and taking advantage of backing up your files automatically. If it’s manual, you could miss a crucial backup.

Time to turn things around. You are a backup pro. You’ve got backups down to a T. You backup you files without lifting a finger and they are frequently backed up to different locations. What could possibly go wrong?

For one, backups aren’t perfect. They can fail or become corrupted. If you aren’t testing whether your backups can be restored, you could find yourself in a tough spot. Testing backups isn’t fast so you’ll want to periodically restore a single file from a backup or the entire backup.

Lastly, if you are saving your files to external media like USB flash drives or sticks, knowing where your backups are will go a long way when you need to recover them quickly. Labeling is a simple way of organizing and finding your backups.

Types of backups

Backups aren’t created equal and come in 3 flavors. There’s full, differential and incremental.

Full backups are what you’d expect. A full backup makes a copy the entire system or all of the files each time the backup runs even if they haven’t changed. Full backups compared to differential and incremental backups are slower to backup but faster to restore. They can also be expensive as you generally need more storage.

Differential backups are a little different. They are a copy of all the system or file changes since the last full backup. If you lose your files and you’d like to get going, you’ll need the last full and differential backup. They are quicker to backup than full backups and they outstrip incremental backups if you need to recover your files.

Unlike differential backups, incremental backups make a copy all the system or file changes from the last full or incremental backup. Incremental backups can be fast and slow. They are fast because the backup files are smaller in size since they only have a copy of the last changes. They can be slower since you need the last full backup together with all the incremental backups for a full recovery.

It’s common to have a combination of full, differential and incremental backups. For instance, you could have weekly full backups with either daily differential or incremental backups. Choosing the right mix boils down to what works for you.

Backing up the things that matter

Start with getting an idea of your files and what’s critical to you. It’s like making a list or inventory of what’s what and where everything is. Here are a few pointers:

Places to backup to

You can create partial or full backups on a variety of media and depending on your needs it can vary between home users, small businesses or enterprises. These include:

If you are wondering whether you need to pick just one, you don’t. You can mix and match as it’s a good idea to keep several copies on different storage types in separate locations.

Choosing a solution that works for you generally comes down to factors such as:

Wrapping it up

It goes without saying that backups can save your bacon. While they won’t stop natural disasters, hardware failures or cyberattacks, they are your go to if you ever need to jump straight back into action. So, getting going and backup your files today.