There are some things about certain industries that are not cool to talk about. I don’t mean they are offensive in any way; they aren’t the “hip and cool” topics. That being said, most of them are absolutely necessary. For the Technology industry, It’s backups. Backing up your data is not fun, and it’s more like a chore than anything else, but that doesn’t mean it’s not essential. Backing up your data is a critical part of maintaining your filing system. Keeping your data on the cloud is great, but if you don’t keep an up-to-date copy somewhere, it can’t be tampered with by a possible infiltrator; it could be vulnerable. I have a few things I do, which I also recommend for others to keep their data secure.
1) Where to keep your backups—I have spoken before about this, but having an offline backup is a good plan simply because it means that you will have a place where you can keep your data, which should only be accessible by you. While your cloud account is a great place to keep your data, having an offline backup is an extra security measure that ensures there will be a copy somewhere that is secure. I don’t want to sound overly paranoid, but keeping your data only in one place is dangerous because if something were to happen to that location, the data would be unrecoverable. Having a backup means that no matter what happens, Your data will be secure. I tend to have an external hard drive, which I detach from my computer when I’m not using it. This means it is physically cut off from any system, and all the complex drive data will be protected from intrusion.
2) How often should you Backup your system – When it comes to your backups, this can differ depending on how often you update your cloud account. If you like me and add things every week or more, more frequent backing up of your filing system may be a good idea. Because the filing system is changing so much and being added to, your backup may not be complete the longer you leave it alone. What I try to do is back up my system once a month. This is because while I do add to my filing system a lot, I’m never more than 30 days out of sync with my most recent backup. If you aren’t adding to your filing system that much, your backup will be more valid for longer.
3) When to ditch your backups – After some time, you will likely have years of backups, which may or may not be suitable for you. To be honest, I haven’t yet deleted my backups, and I’ve been backing up for about 8 years as of this post, but I think that I may start to consider it going forward (for sure, there will be an update in the future). I think that this is a “player’s choice” situation. If you would like to keep your backups forever, certainly when it comes to your personal filing system, then I see no problem with that. An individual won’t create a vast amount of data that needs to be stored in their lives. Corporations are another matter, but that’s probably for a different post. Consider what laws require you to keep legal data and for how long. In Canada, Tax information is required to be kept for 8 years, and while you will be keeping it for that long in your active filing system, consider keeping your backups for that long as well. It could be different if you live in a different country.
Like any other system in the world, having a process to follow makes everything easier. If you’re struggling to find an easy way to manage your backups, I’ve written about this in another blog post, but for the moment, I would only suggest that if you haven’t put together some form of system for backing up your data, you do so. It doesn’t have to be wildly complex; it could be as simple as backing up to an external hard drive occasionally. The best part is that because the onus is on you, you can decide when and how you would like to back up which bits of data. It’s entirely in your hands.
How do you back up your data?
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