Working from home is significantly risky by virtue of the fact that most people don’t feel the need to have an online backup service. In most cases your average HDD or SSD works great, but what happens when you’ve worked for so long that you have hundreds of gigs of data to transfer and you have to deal with a complete drive failure?
The risk goes way beyond just losing your family photos, the damage to your PC can be irreparable if you don’t take the necessary steps to back up your data. It’s actually pretty simple, all you have to do is follow a couple of easy steps
How to do it
Use a dedicated backup service
Now, I know what you’re thinking, it costs more, and yes, on some level it does. But the inherent peace of mind you get from having a dedicated back up service far outweighs the incurring costs. You can only trust an external hard drive about as far as you can use it, but with a certified back up service, your data is not just protected it’s also safe from physical damage.
OneDrive Backup
If you are organized and diligent enough to have a record of which files are important and which ones aren’t worth backing up, then the one drive backup system will save you tons of time. If you have a Microsoft account you qualify for free cloud storage, so moving files from your HDD to online storage won’t be a problem.
The only problem here is it depends on the amount of data you plan to back up, as the limit is usually set at about 5GB. You also need constant internet access, lack of which may affect the syncing process.
Clone your Drive
This method is not recommended, simply because it takes up too much time and it can only hold one replicated drive at any one time. It works by pretty much creating the same exact content on another drive. It works, to a degree, but the problem is you can’t really differentiate the contents once the cloning is complete, and if you go back and change anything it won’t be reflected on the other side.
External HDD/SDD
We have to be sensitive to the fact that budgetary constraints have a huge role to play where data backup is concerned. As much as you may want to store your data on the cloud, you may lack the resources. The single, most convenient way to ensure you don’t lose your important data is to separate it from the rest of the files and store them on a separate drive. This safeguards your data and ensures that it’s not corrupted by malware, or lost in case of sudden drive failure.
Network Attached Storage
NAS may be a bit expensive, but it is relatively effective in as far back up services are concerned. This is mainly because it allows you to back up a network of computers in your home, which means you can share files across a network that can include anything from game consoles to smart devices like tablets or phones. Some cool add-on features like security controls, multiple Ethernet and USB ports as well as a top of the line File Transfer Protocol gives you a variety of options for efficient file storage. Especially if you’re dealing with massive data amounts.
Bottom line
Dedicating your back up service may not seem like the most practical option at present, but it is perhaps the only strategy that has pros that outweighs its drawbacks. That said, you can always shop around for the best-dedicated backup service, if and when you choose to consider it.
Featured image source: Google
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