Confused about Data backups? Here are the best tools for the job

According to a recent study by Veenam, businesses see nearly 58% of their data backups fail and with the current state of the world, that is a high enough number to cause some serious headaches. COVID-19 has acted like a stress test of sorts for businesses, pushing their IT capabilities to the brink as the world quickly adapts to a new status quo.

With many countries still in a perpetual state of lockdown, the shift to working from home seems to be putting some undue stress on a company’s IT architecture. Many companies are being held back by outdated data protection methods that snap when put to the test.

While this may not mean much to an average user, it is not hard to draw parallels to the need for better data protection methods. With the way the internet works, your data is increasingly at risk to being lost in a void of one’s and zero’s.

It is a good idea to back up your data occasionally, useful for those times when your hard drive crashes or something beyond your control causes damage to one of your devices. There are multiple ways of backing up your data, let us look at some of them.

The basic rules

Before we talk about the tools themselves, there are a few basic rules to backing up your data. You should always have a copy of all your important data on an external hard drive. Good external hard drives can be pricey, but they are worth the investment considering they will have you up and running again in case something happens. You can either start small with an external drive and keep upgrading it as your data increases or just bite the bullet and buy a decent 2TB drive. They are expensive but they also have you covered for longer before needing to upgrade.

With an external drive sorted, you should also backup all your data on the cloud.

Now hang on, before you tell me that you just spent all that money on an external drive, cloud storage is not as expensive as you think. For Rs 650 a month, Google One gives you access to 2TB of cloud space and depending on how much space you want, you may even be okay with the Rs 210 per month plan for 200 GB. I know its another subscription to add to your list of other services but the reason we are doing this is because physical drives fail for a lot of reasons and you would not want to be in a situation where both your device and the physical backup fail.

What should you backup?

Besides the important files that you may have, there are other types of data that you can backup to make your experience a little smoother. Let us start simple and look at the browser. This is the one thing that often gets neglected during backups but fortunately you do not really need to worry about it aside from checking in on it occasionally.

If you are using a modern browser like Chrome or Firefox, then chances are your bookmarks, site history, saved passwords, extensions etc. are all being backed up to a cloud automagically. What you need to make sure is that you are signed into your account.

On Chrome, this means your Google account. Just look for a user logo to the right of the address bar and click on it, then sign into your account. It will now automatically sync all your browser data to the cloud and even give you access to the same data on other devices that support Chrome.

Another tip for PC users is to always have basic drivers for your peripherals at hand. While it may not be always useful since most manufacturers provide up to date drivers online and Windows 10 itself has support for a lot of drivers built in, its useful in cases where you might find yourself with a fresh install of Windows and no internet connection. Having access to drivers will allow you to get to your feet more quickly.

Speaking of Windows, did you know there was a built-in utility that lets you create a restore point? Think of restore points as snapshots of the last stable condition your system was in before all hell broke loose.

To use this feature, connect your external drive to your computer and press the “Windows” logo on your keyboard. Now type “Backup” and choose “Add a drive” under File History in the window that pops up. By default, Windows will only back up your system partition i.e., the drive windows Is installed on.  You can click on “More options” to add other folders that you feel are important.

The best tools for the job

Now that you have decided to backup your data, the question is what devices do you use for it? There are many options available, and they all depend on what size your backup is going to be. The easiest to recommend would be external drives as we discussed above. There are many types of external drives but the choice you must make is this, do you want a faster but more expensive Solid-State Drive (SSD) that are also less prone to failure or do you want a cheaper but less effective Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Now depending on your budget and the size of your data, choose one that seems right to you.

The second most common tool for backup is USB Flash Drives. Once again, the good ones are usually expensive but offer an advantage, portability. They can be carried around easily in your pocket or stored away at a safe place for when you need them. You will need to splurge though, to get the most capacity you can (usually 512GB) and do not even try looking at prices for 1TB or 2TB flash drives, they are insanely expensive.

You also have various options for cloud services, Microsoft’s OneDrive gives you 6TB of total cloud space for Rs 530 per month as a nice family plan if you have multiple users. It gives you 1TB for six accounts, totalling to 6TB overall.

Google One charges Rs 650 per month for 2TB of data. The service also supports adding multiple accounts to one plan.

Dropbox is pricey, costing $9.99 (Rs 720 approx.) a month for 2TB of data but comes with a few bundled extras that you might want to investigate.

The good news here is all three services come with a free version that you can try out to decide the best one for you. Dropbox limits free users to 2GB of space, Google provides 15GB for free and Microsoft sits somewhere in the middle with 5GB of free space. This is more than enough for you to try them out.

So there you go, you have now successfully backed up your important files on physical storage and on the cloud. Plus, you also have Windows backup running to keep all your important system files in sync. Unless the apocalypse occurs, this three-pronged backup should keep your data intact till the next big upgrade.