The Four Do's To An Effective Data Backup Plan

As we all know hard drives do not store our data permanently. Perhaps some of us do not know that. I am here to say, hard drives can fail, and usually will at any given time. This means our data has been lost totally in most cases. So here are my four do's to planning ahead and having a Data Recovery Plan in place ahead of time.

1. Backup Your Data!-
This is the single most important thing to do. Having a hard copy of your data only lets us make sure that we will never lose what is important to us. When I say hard copy I mean that it has to be placed on a CD or DVD using our CD/DVD burners. The only other good option is tape backups, but that is more aimed for Businesses as that option is quite expensive.

2. Use RAID or Network/External Hard Drive-
Consider using a RAID array in your PC, or using two hard drives in your PC. With RAID you can configure it mirror you hard drive and if one crashes you have the other one to fall back on. With using what I call a Network Hard Drive, you just have two separate HD's in your PC. One which would be your main system partition, and the second would be a separate primary partition in which you can store your files. With this option you would still need to follow number 1 and back up your data manually.

3. Have a local IT/PC Professional-
Having an established relationship with a local professional can help you in difficult times. They can assist you with any problems you may have, and answer questions. They can also help you retrieve your data in times of emergency, where no other options are viable.

4. Always be ready-
If you plan on the worst right from the start, then your ahead of the game. Just plan for the worst, and keep your data backed up and you will never worry about losing it. The mistake a lot of us make, is to think that we can never lose our data because hard drives are permanent storage. This myth is probably the biggest one I deal with my clients on a daily basis. They don't realize that once the data is gone, there is no recovering it. Unless you pay the big bucks to a special company, but most of us don't have that money to spend.

With a little planning and prep we can avoid the everyday disasters of losing our data. Just follow the four steps I've outlined here and you will be on your way to ensuring that your data is never lost, because we all know how it is to lose our digital pictures, MP3's, Word Doc's, Excel Spreadsheets, Videos, and any other important data that a hard drive stores.

Another thing to remember is also to never assume that your data is gone until consulting an IT professional first. Chances are that perhaps the boot sector is corrupt or something or similar nature not allowing the PC to boot up correctly. In these cases we can retrieve your data to another hard disk.

By: TheCNZ

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11 Year IT Consulting Professional Owner-TCN
The Computer Nerdz Professional computer repair in Kenosha, WI. Affordable, visit us today.