The importance of backups

I cannot stress enough with friends, family, clients or even potential clients the importance of backups. I always feel sorry for someone who phones me and tells me that their notebook has been stolen or that their hard drive seems to have crashed "now where can I get my information!?". "Did you make any backups?" would be my rhetorical reply. No matter if you are a home user with some of your holiday pictures and itunes library or if you are running your business from your computer - backups are absolutely imperative.

Backups are the first thing that one should consider with your information as it is THE MOST IMPORTANT step in your disaster recovery plan, but unfortunately it is always omitted or "forgotten". Generally as long as you are up and running backups are the last thing on your mind.

One has to weigh up the cost of losing years of business, financial or client data or even accidentally deleting all the pictures of your kid's first school day compared with implementing an effective backup solution.

I would also like to stress that a backup solution does not have to be complicated or expensive at all. The simple process of a freelance copywriter or editor copying his documents to a USB flash drive which is then stored in a safe place could be the difference between loaning a friend's machine to carry on working from your backups after your laptop has been stolen or spending months having to recreate your portfolio and losing out on precious work.

With external hard drives being so inexpensive there really is no excuse. Nowadays even not having the cash to purchase an external drive is not a valid reason not to have backups as one can do backups online FOR FREE - completely secure!!!

Enter one such wonderful product called SugarSync which provides one with free online backup storage space of up to 5GB!




Be honest now, have you done your backup today?

Warren.