Website Builders.com

  • Home
  • Builder Reviews
        • Our team have carefully reviewed a selection of premium website building platform, making it easier for you to choose the right one.

          While most website builders are compatible for generic  website building, including online stores, blogs and generic websites, some are better than others depending on what your website type.

        • Website Builder Reviews

          GoDaddy

          IM Creator

          Jimdo

          Squarespace

          Voog

          Weebly

          Wix

          WordPress

        • Store Builder Reviews

          BigCommerce

          GoDaddy Store

          Shopify

          Weebly

          Wix

          Yola

        • Comparisons

          Wix vs. Weebly

          Shopify vs. BigCommerce

  • Start A Blog
  • How To Guides
        • With over 500 pages of detailed tutorials and guides, our guides cover a large chunk of online topics.

          Learn crafty tips and tricks to make your time online smooth. Our directory is useful for internet newbies, as well as aspiring website builders.

          Check out the full directory.

        • Building a Website

          How To Build a Website

          Name Your Website – Domain

          Picking a Web Hosting Service

          Content and User Experience

          More

        • Searching and Research

          Searching the Web

          Doing Research Online

          The World of Wiki

          Finding Videos Online

          More

        • E-mails – Basics and Advanced

          Getting Started

          Sending an E-mail Message

          Opening Attachments

          Sending Attachments

          More

        • Social Media & Communication

          Instant Messaging

          Online Networking

          Facebook

          LinkedIn

          More

        • Files, Downloads, Software & Installs

          File Formats and Extensions

          Install Plug-Ins

          How to Download Files

          Downloading Software

          More

        • Making Money Online

          Making Money with Facebook

          Affiliate Marketing

          Virtual Assistant

          Writing Articles

          More

        • Online Shopping

          10 Tips for Smart and Safe Shopping

          Smart Shopping

          Protecting Personal Information

          Looking for Discounts

          More

  • Website Builder Tools Your Business Can’t Do Without (+ Links To Useful Resources)
    • HTML Character Codes
    • Advertiser Tracking Cookies: There ARE Ways To Opt Out – Here’s How
    • Website Glossary
  • Our Blog
        • Recent Posts

          When you have awesome writers, it is easy to spread wisdom. Take a look at some of our recent posts on various internet and website related topics.

          Have any suggestions on topics? Don’t hold back, send us your ideas:

          [email protected]

        • 12 Simple Rules on How to Use E-mail Politely

          Live Chat Software: Is it Worth It? Facebook Says Yes.

          Algorithmic Warfare: Is it the Beginning or the End?

          How to Promote Your Pet Business Online

          DIY Marketing: 7 Steps for any Business Owner

        • 20 Ideas to Generate Your First Online Sale

          Complete Guide to Content Marketing

          8 Best Free Photo Editors for Product Photosraphy

          Press Kits: DIY to Free Media Hype

          Why Backlinks are Essential for SEO – How To Build Them

  • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • FAQ
    • How Did You Make This Site?
    • How the Website Is Funded
    • Our Team
You are here: Home / The Complete List Of How-To Tutorials For Internet Dummies / Beat Baddies & Enjoy Surfing: 11 Wise Ways To Stay Safe Online In 2023 / Backup Your Data

Backup Your Data

Disclosure: Your support helps keep the site running! We earn a referral fee for some of the services we recommend on this page. Learn more

How often do you backup your hard drive? Every day? Once a month? Never?

Unfortunately that last answer — never — is all too common. Everyone knows they are supposed to back up their computer, but everyone thinks:

  • My data isn’t all that important. It isn’t worth the expense and hassle.
  • It’s never going to happen to me.

These are both wrong.

Contents

  • 1 You Need to Backup Your Computer Hard Drive
    • 1.1 “My Data Isn’t That Important”
    • 1.2 “It’s Never Going to Happen to Me”
  • 2 What to Backup
  • 3 How to Backup
    • 3.1 Physical Backups
    • 3.2 Cloud-Based Backup Services
    • 3.3 Popular Online Backup Services
    • 3.4 Privacy Concerns With Online Backup Services
    • 3.5 An Alternative Online Backup System
  • 4 Conclusion

You Need to Backup Your Computer Hard Drive

Let’s deal with each of the two common misconceptions that lead people to never back up their computers data.

“My Data Isn’t That Important”

If you use your computer for work, you know for a fact that your data is valuable. Losing it might cost you your job, or at least set back your efforts. It can take weeks or months to recreate or redo work that you lose.

Students, also, can ill-afford to lose their data. In progress papers, class notes, homework, and other assignments — along with downloaded readings and other material. Losing all of this can be a serious, serious setback in your studies, and may cost you grades.

Even if you don’t use your computer for school or work, you probably have documents and media that you do not want to lose, material that is too important to you and very difficult, time consuming, or impossible to replace.

  • Pictures you’ve taken
  • Contacts / Address Book
  • Email Messages (if you use a desktop client like Outlook)
  • Personal documents like résumés and cover letters from previous job searches
  • Downloaded videos and music

“It’s Never Going to Happen to Me”

Everyone thinks they are never going to be the victim of a tragedy. Data loss isn’t the worse tragedy that someone can suffer, but people still avoid thinking about how it could possibly happen to them.

The fact is, data loss is remarkably common. It can happen to anyone, at any time, for a number of different reasons. And while you should be very careful and responsible, avoiding the sorts of things that lead to data loss — sometimes it still happens, no matter how vigilant you are.

Some of the causes of data loss include:

  • Your computer is infected with a virus that deletes your data
  • Your computer is attacked by an encryption blackmailing scheme
  • Your hard drive fails
  • You accidentally delete something, or everything
  • You accidentally reformat your harddrive
  • Your computer is stolen — this happens to laptops all the time
  • Your computer is lost — again, a common occurrence with laptops
  • Your computer is destroyed in a disaster such as a fire or flood
  • Your computer is damaged by an electrical surge

Any of these things can happen to anyone, at any time. No one is immune from bad luck.

What to Backup

You could simply copy your entire hard drive, but there’s usually no need to. You don’t usually need to back up the operating system, utility files, or applications. What you mostly want to backup are your personal files — the stuff you cannot replace, or cannot easily replace.

This usually includes:

  • documents
  • projects
  • music
  • videos
  • downloads

How to Backup

There are two broad categories of backups, physical and online. Physical backups used to be the standard backup method, but online backups have recently surpassed them as the most common type.

Physical Backups

You can back up your files on physical media, such as CDs or DVDs — if your computer supports the appropriate drives, or if you use outboard USB drives. You can also get an external hard drive. This can be plugged directly to your computer via USB cable, or connected via a local network. This is the most expensive solution, but it can be every convenient, and the price on high-volume disk drives is getting lower and lower every year.

One thing to consider with physical backups is that if they are stored at the same physical location as your computer, then your data isn’t protected from some form of physical harm: fire, flood, and possibly theft.

Therefore, it is a good idea to keep your physical copies in another location. This is usually referred to as offsite backup.

Cloud-Based Backup Services

Every day, there are more and more options for online backup — commonly called cloud backup. These are online subscription services — some free, some paid — in which your data is stored on the servers of another company.

This is a very convenient solution. In addition to data backup, most of these services include additional features, such as:

  • file sharing
  • file syncing across multiple computers
  • online document editing
  • online collaboration
  • integration with other apps, especially project management and productivity apps

Popular Online Backup Services

  • Apple iCloud — only available for Mac users, integrates easily into the OSX experience, allowing you to easily backup and sync your files, apps, photos, and iTunes collection.
  • Google Drive — This is part of an entire suite or personal and business productivity applications called Google Apps. Drive combines file backup and syncing with online document creation and collaboration. Drive, along with Apps, is free up to certain usage limits.
  • Dropbox — One of the most popular online backup services. Dropbox also has excellent file-sharing facilities. Free up to certain usage limits.
  • Carbonite — This is one of the leading backup and data management services for business and industry, and it is very popular for personal use as well. They have a particular focus on security, and their servers are compliant with federal privacy regulations such as HIPAA and FERPA.

Privacy Concerns With Online Backup Services

Some people — privacy advocates — do not prefer these types of services, for one of a couple different reasons:

  • They claim that if your data is managed by another company, it isn’t really your data. The company may, for example, be forced to relinquish your data to law enforcement or national security agents.
  • They also point out, in reference to free and “freemium” services, that if you are not paying the service, then you are not the customer. The question then is — who is the customer? Privacy advocates suggest that the customer may be advertisers and others interested in buying access to your data.

An Alternative Online Backup System

If you like the convenience of online backups but have concerns about privacy issues, or cost — or if you just like managing your own stuff — you can try OwnCloud.

OwnCloud is a Free and Open Source cloud storage tool for data backup and syncing. It provides most of the features of services like DropBox and Google Drive, but you install, manage, and control it yourself.

You have to be a little tech savvy to use this, though, and you have to have a remote server (which means there is some cost, no matter what).

Conclusion

There are a lot of options for how you backup your data. Some are free, and most are easy.

You really have no excuse to go another day without backing up your files. And you never know what will happen tomorrow. Go — do it now.

Latest Posts

Hosting

Black Friday 2023: Website Builder & Web Hosting Deals For Webmasters [Updated]

Uncategorized

Why WebsiteBuilders.com Got Hacked (Yes, You Can Blame Social Warfare)

E-mail Internet

E-Mail Etiquette: 12 Basic Rules For Politely Using E-Mail

Marketing social networking

Live Chat Software: Should You Invest In It? (It’s Easier Than You Think)

Computer Science

Never Heard Of Algorithmic Warfare? Then You’d Better Read This

Marketing

How To Successfully Promote Your Pet Business Online With Minimum Effort

Most Popular Reviews

  • Website Builder Reviews
  • Wix
  • Weebly
  • Squarespace
  • GoDaddy Website Builder
  • Shopify

Recent Posts

  • Black Friday 2023: Website Builder & Web Hosting Deals For Webmasters [Updated] November 5, 2019
  • Why WebsiteBuilders.com Got Hacked (Yes, You Can Blame Social Warfare) March 23, 2019
  • E-Mail Etiquette: 12 Basic Rules For Politely Using E-Mail November 15, 2017

About WebsiteBuilders.com

Everything you need to know about the WebsiteBuilders.com team.

About Us

Our Team

How The Website Is Funded

Privacy Policy

© 2017-2022 Website Builders.com | Sitemap