It’s a new year, so time to back up those computer files
You don’t want to lose precious memories
It's a new year and along with hoping for a return to a fairly normal life you should also prepare for disaster. Not a disaster on a national scale but something that will still cause you stress, grief, and quite possibly money. It's the inevitable demise of your computer or mobile device and the potential loss of your irreplaceable photos, documents, music and other files. The beginning of a new year is a good time to initiate a plan to back up your data.
This task used to be pretty technical but these days you have readily available options and a lot of automated software to assist you, and thus no good excuses to put it off.
Your mobile devices, such as an iPhone, iPad, or Android device, are the easiest to back up. Apple offers five gigs of cloud storage space for free at iCloud and Google Drive and Photos will give you 15 gigs, although additional storage space is available at each service for a nominal fee per year.
On an iPad or iPhone open Settings, log in to iCloud with your Apple ID, and in the additional settings move the sliders to back up everything from photos to music and especially contacts and passwords. On an Android device, sign in with a Google account and enable Google Drive backups. If you lose your device or get a new one it is relatively easy to restore everything from the cloud storage. Apple has instructions for the iPad and iPhone (https://support.apple.com/ en-ca/HT204136) and check the Google help site for Android instructions (https://tinyurl.com/y3l8amar ).
With a Windows desktop or laptop your backup options are more diverse and depend on how much data you need to back up and whether you want local or cloud storage.
If you don’t have a lot of pictures and documents on your computer purchase a USB flash drive, plug it into a USB port on your computer, and copy folders to it. The default storage folders on a Windows computer are Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos. Click on the This PC icon on the desktop and you'll see the folders listed at the top of the window. Right click on each, select Send To and pick the flash drive.
For more storage space purchase a USB external hard drive and use one of several methods to back up your files. One way is the laborious method of dragging and dropping files to the hard drive but an easier way is to use software designed for the process.
File History is included in Windows 10 and will copy your default folders and any others you specify to an external hard drive. Plug the external drive into a USB slot, click on the Start button, Settings, then Update and Security, and finally the Backup label on the left side. You select the external drive and the folders to be backed up and a schedule. There are instructions at the PC World Website (https://tinyurl.com/y5jovldw).
Another option is to utilize the backup software that comes pre-installed on many external drives. Connect the drive, double click the This PC icon on the desktop, and browse the external drive to look for the software to install.
Or you can download a free program called AOMEI Backupper (www.ubackup.com/). The free version will do backups quite easily and synch folders so that they are always upto-date.
The problem with a local backup is that if the external drive is always connected to the computer it could be stolen or destroyed along with the computer and a virus, such as ransomware, will destroy the files on your computer as well as on the external drive.
The solution to the problems of a local backup is to use a cloud service to store copies of your files at a distant location and keep them in synch. In my next column I'll discuss cloud storage, using a second computer as a backup device, and backing up your whole computer including all of the apps and the operating system.