The Backup

I have written about backing up the information on your computer in the past. I believe that the anniversary of this past weekend, and the current trials of the citizens of the lower portion of the country, shows the importance of a backup. Obviously, the health, and safety of people take precedence over most other things, but there comes a time when you must start over. Backups can be an important part of your emergency readiness.
Disasters, whether natural or man made, have a way of forcing those affected to rebuild their lives from square one. A backup will not prevent a person from starting over, but at least they will not need to start from square one. There are two types of backups, remote and onsite. Remote backups mean that the backups are performed at a location other than where the computer is located. A copy of your computers information is stored there and retrieving the information can normally be done online. This provides you the benefit of having access to the information on your system even if your computer is rendered unusable or you must relocate. Many companies offer online remote backup services for as low as five dollars per month.
With onsite backups, you physically backup the information from your computer. This is definitely the cheaper and for some the easiest route. You can perform onsite backups with the software that is included with your operating system or you can buy a third party backup program. All of the versions of Microsoft Windows from 98 to XP, and the MAC OS operating systems have ways that individual computer owners can backup their own information. The advantages of onsite backups are that they can be portable and convenient. Onsite backups can be copied to a CD, DVD, or a hard drive. When an emergency occurs, you can take the CD, DVD, or hard drive with you and reload your information into the first machine that you find suitable. The downside is that the media that the backup is on can become damaged, which essentially sends you back to square one. Maxtor has designed a backup system called One-Touch that allows you press one button to backup your computer. The One Touch system is small and it has a hard case to prevent damage to data.
Ideally, you would want to initiate any backup program by performing a full backup to save all of the information on your system. Next, you would proceed with a series of incremental backups. These backups, only copy a portion of your information or information that has changed since the last backup. A good schedule for daily computer users is a full backup followed by three incremental backups. Those that are infrequent users, a schedule where you perform a backup once a week or once a month may be more practical. The important thing is that you start some type of backup system. Emergencies have a way of not waiting for you to be prepared.