Back it up: Your high-tech resolutions for 2019
It’s a new year, the perfect time to think about making sure your data is safe
It’s the beginning of a brand new year and you’re probably wondering how to keep that hasty New Year’s resolution of getting to the gym every day. However, there are a couple of essential resolutions you should keep that won’t take up much time or money and can make your life a lot less frustrating and stressful. They are your hitech resolutions.
Your first resolution should be to immediately back up your files. There is a very real possibility that in the coming months your computer’s hard drive might fail or you’ll see a blue screen indicating the Windows operating system has a fatal error and can’t start. You may inadvertently open an email attachment and install ransomware which will make all of your precious files inaccessible. In all of these cases your irreplaceable photos, documents, music and movies will be gone, but not if you have backups.
The first thing you need to do is get a backup device. You can purchase an external hard drive with a terabyte of storage space, which will hold more files than you can produce in years, for about $80. Most of external drives come with software which will search your computer for files and automatically back up everything of importance. There is usually a help file on the drive, or you can visit the manufacturer’s website for assistance.
If you want to be totally immune to any eventuality download a free program called Easeus Todo (https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-free.html). It will make an exact copy, called a clone, of your hard drive including the operating system, files and programs. In the eventuality of a hard drive failure you can install a new drive and restore the backup to it. If the operating system crashes you can restore the computer, including all of your files and programs, and be up and running in less than a couple of hours. My advice is to not keep the external hard drive connected to the computer all of the time since it could be taken if the computer is stolen, or a virus will seek out any device connected to the computer and destroy the files on it as well.
The problem with backing up to an external drive is that in the event of a catastrophe any new files since the last backup will be lost. If this is a concern and you only need a backup of a few gigs of important files, you can turn to the cloud.
There are several cloud storage services such as Microsoft’s OneDrive, Apple’s iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive. Each offers a free account which will let you store a limited amount of data on its server, ranging from a measly 2 gigabytes at Dropbox to a fairly hefty 15 gigs at Google Drive, although you can buy additional space for a low yearly fee.
You download a free program which will create a folder on your computer’s hard drive and anything saved to that folder will automatically be uploaded and stored to the cloud server. Google Drive will let you select multiple folders to back up.
Tablets and smartphones are not immune to failure or theft and you should ensure that all of the data, apps, and settings are safely copied and ready to restore. Your iPad or iPhone can automatically backup to your iCloud account. In Settings click on your name at the top and under iCloud you can select what is saved. The other method is to install iTunes on your computer and when you plug in your phone or tablet it will automatically be backed up. Apple has instructions at support.apple.com/en-ca/HT203977 ).
Unfortunately, Android device settings vary from brand to brand but in general you’ll need a free Google account and in Settings you access the section for Google where you can specify what is backed up to the Google servers. Computerworld has a nice tutorial on backing up your Android device (https://tinyurl.com/ybyj7z5u).
In my next column I’ll discuss the other essential hi-tech resolution you should be keeping.