Backup Service
Is a grinding noise or clicking sound coming from inside your computer? Does your operating system fail to load? Does random strange occurrences happen while using your computer? Are files suddenly disappearing and reappearing? Your Hard Drive is failing. You need to backup your data now!
Computer backup is the storing copies of your files on a medium other than your hard disk. The reason that we make computer backups is to protect against the event that something happens to damage our files so they are no longer usable. If we have backups of our files, then we can restore these files to our computer through our backups.
Everyone knows about losing data in a computer crash or as the result of a virus, and backup is one of the most powerful ways to protect against this. While backup will not save your computer from crashing, or keep viruses from being able to infect it, it will ensure that no matter what happens to your computer you will still have access to the files that are important to you. Backup is a powerful tool and everyone who uses a computer should have at least some of their files in backup.
We all know that someday something will happen, and when that day comes you will be happy to have your files in backup.
Computer backups can be made in very different formats. The traditional method of backing up computer files was the floppy disk. However, floppy disks are becoming increasingly obsolete. It is already not uncommon to not even see a new computer that includes a floppy disk drive when you go to the computer store, and it is becoming almost impossible to actually get a new computer that includes such a drive. Floppy disks can only hold 1.4 megabytes of data, and there are formats which can hold much more.
Optical Media
CD-Rs are CD-ROMs hold up to 800 megabytes of storage. There are some drawbacks to using these kinds of discs the main one being that you need a lot of them to back up a big hard drive. You can also use CD-RWs, which can be written onto more than once, unlike a CD-R. DVD burners are also becoming increasingly common, and a typical DVD-R can hold up to 4700 megabytes, or 4.7 gigabytes. Another option is a Blu-ray disc which holds up to 25GB on a single layer and 50GB on a double layer disc.
A small, USB flash drive
You can also use a USB flash drive to back up your entire PC, which is surprisingly quick and simple, but you have to make sure you buy a flash drive that has more space than your computer. Flash drives may not be the best for frequent backups because it diminishes the longevity, due to the limited write/re-write cycles you'll get with most portable NAND flash media.
An external USB hard-drive
An external hard drive (EHD) is exactly the same as an internal hard drive, except it's packed in a separate box. It's very easy to copy files from your internal drive to an external one, although it can take a while. Usually, copying is done via a USB 2.0 cable, since most PCs now have at least one USB 2.0 port.
Remember that external hard drives can also fail and that having backups means having at least two copies of everything. If you move files from your PC to an external hard drive to free up space, you still only have one copy. That's not a backup.
An alternative to backing up selected files is to take a 'snapshot' of the whole hard drive. Many programs can do this, though the current favourite is Acronis True Image. Free alternative disk imaging programs include Runtime's DriveImage XML (free for personal use), EaseUS Todo Backup and Paragon Backup & Recovery.
A cloud-based, hosted backup service
You can also make backups of your files online. Online backup involves putting your computer files onto an online server, which you can access from any computer that is connected to the internet. This allows you to not have to bother with physical media such as key drives or CD-ROMs while still backing up your data in a secure location.
BiLTeK Computer Services can make backups using any of the traditional methods, whether you want to backup your whole hard drive including the operating system or just certain files or folders.
| Backup/Transfer | Laptop $70 | PC $70 |
