World Backup Day

World Backup Day has come and gone for this year, but we do not need to celebrate it only once a year. Accidents and data loss can happen at anytime. It is a good idea to create an automatic plan to backup or to get on a schedule to do it manually. Files that should be backed up may be found in your (My) Documents, Desktop, Pictures, Music, and Movies folders. Here are a few ways to safely backup your files:

Physical Options

External Hard Drive or USB Drive - I recommend these over burning your files to a CD or DVD because it will be easy to edit and reuse for future backups. With this method, just find your files and drag them over to the drive. This needs to be done manually, so I recommend setting a reminder on your computer, phone, or calendar to alert you periodically. ($ Cost of hard drive)

Apple Time Machine - Apple makes it simple: just plug in an external hard drive dedicated to backing up to your computer and enable the time machine feature. Your data will automatically backup to the drive, and, in the future, anytime the drive is connected, it will backup any files that have been edited since the last backup without prompting. To view or access the backups through this method, you will need to go through the Time Machine Settings and choose Enter Time Machine to view your backed up files and previous versions of each. ($ Cost of hard drive)

Window’s Backup and Restore – Through the options in the Control Panel, you can choose which files or folders and how often to back them up as well as the desired location to send it. ($ Cost of hard drive)

Cloud Options

Google Drive – With Google Apps for Education, we get unlimited space in each of our Drives (personal accounts receive only 15 GB, but $1.99 per month gets you 100 GB). You can put your files in Drive by merely dragging them into the Drive window or pressing the upload button. Another option is to install the Google Drive application on your computer. This will place a folder on your computer in which you could store all or most of your files that will regularly backup to your Google Drive. If you want or need it installed, open your Google Drive and look on the left for an “Install Drive for your computer” button. I like this option because it doesn’t force me to turn my Word or Pages documents into Google Docs, thus preserving my formatting options and the ability to still edit them. (Free)

Dropbox – This service is similar to Google Drive in that you can manage your files online or within the installed folder on your computer. A major difference is that Dropbox only provides users with 2 GB of storage for free. You can earn another 1.25 GB by jumping through a few hoops like going through some initial set up options, backing up photos from a camera, and referring others to Dropbox. Depending on what you save or are working on, this could be a viable option. (Free)